Phone Manufacturers Get Broadcom Patent Reprieve

While upholding a ban on importing Qualcomm chips themselves into the US, an appeals court judge stayed the ban for individual phone manufacturers to continue shipping their phones here.

T-Mobile USA and AT&T joined five manufacturers in appealing the decision, which was handed down by the US International Trade Commission in June, and upheld by the White House in August. Sprint Nextel was missing from the decision, although the court's ruling also covered them as well.

That provider has also begun to sell phones that include a workaround so that they don't infringe on Broadcom patents. The decision allows Motorola, Samsung, LG, Kyocera, and Sanyo to all continue to introduce phones to the US market that may include the infringing chip.

Verizon avoided any court time by coming to a licensing agreement on its own with Broadcom in July. It was believed that Verizon and Sprint would be hit the hardest, since both use Qualcomm's CDMA technology.

The argument of the appellants was that since Broadcom had only gone after Qualcomm and not the individual manufacturers themselves, the ITC could not block the imports of the manufacturers as well. The judge agreed, and stayed the ban for those parties.

Broadcom said it was pleased with the decision, and predicted that the end result would be in the company's favor. "We look forward to an expedited process in the appeal, and believe that the stay will eventually be lifted for all parties," general counsel David Dull said.

Qualcomm, of course, put a different spin on the judgement, but was decidedly lower key: "We are pleased that the Court of Appeals recognized the undeserved harm to parties who were not named in the lawsuit, and that our customers will continue to be able to introduce new products into the U.S. marketplace during the appeals process," its legal counsel Alex Rogers said.