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EU Drops Qualcomm Antitrust Probe By Aoife White November 25, 2009 7:05AM In July, South Korea's fair trade regulator fined Qualcomm a record $208 million for abusing its dominant position as a supplier of CDMA mobile phone chips to charge higher royalties to companies that used rival chipsets and giving rebates to customers who bought from Qualcomm. Qualcomm developed CDMA, or code division multiple access.   Related Topics European Union Qualcomm Antitrust CDMA NEC Broadcom Latest News Endeavour Inspected for Damage Autism Risk for Kids of Older Mothers Go Online and You Can Save the Planet In Haiti, Relief Gaps Are Spreading U.S. To Form Climate-Change Agency European Union antitrust regulators on Tuesday dropped a monopoly abuse probe into wireless chip maker Qualcomm Inc. after mobile phone companies withdrew complaints about high royalty fees. Broadcom Corp., NEC Corp., Nokia Corp., LM Ericsson, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Texas Instruments Inc. backed off complaints they made in October 2005 that Qualcomm broke agreements among patent holders to keep costs at reasonable levels for key WCDMA patents used in third-generation phones. Qualcomm's general counsel Don Rosenberg said the company was "extremely pleased" that the four-year EU investigation was over without any charges filed. Ericsson said it would no longer back the EU investigation but would pursue discussions with other antitrust regulators around the world. It said phone companies had filed "substantial economic evidence that Qualcomm's conduct has caused mobile phone users to pay billions of euros in unnecessary costs." The EU's executive said it was still concerned about how technology was priced after it was adopted as an industry standard but could not commit the time or resources to "complex" assessments. "Any antitrust enforcer has to be careful about overturning commercial agreements," it said in a statement. "The commission does not consider it appropriate to invest further resources in this case." In July, South Korea's fair trade regulator fined Qualcomm a record $208 million for abusing its dominant position as a supplier of CDMA mobile phone chips to charge higher royalties to companies that used rival chipsets and giving rebates to customers who bought from Qualcomm. Qualcomm developed CDMA, or code division multiple access, a rival standard to the dominant cellular standard GSM, or global system for mobile. The company controls most of the key patents. CDMA is used in the United States and South Korea. Every handset in South Korea has a CDMA chip and manufacturers of handsets have to pay royalty fees to Qualcomm. Japan's fair trade commission also ordered Qualcomm to end monopoly abuse linked to contracts that it said gave Qualcomm unfair advantages over Japanese chip maker competitors.   © 2010 Associated Press under contract with YellowBrix. All rights reserved.   Tell Us What You Think Your Comment: Also Visit: iPad Info Center Billions of Bytes Mobile Device Now Apple Info Center TopTechWire.com Advertisement  Chips & Processors 1.   IBM Power7 Server Takes on Big Load 2.   Chip Espionage Case Revealed 3.   Intel & Micron Double Flash Memory 4.   TSMC Says Profit More Than Doubles 5.   Processor Sales Are Back on Track Chip Espionage Case Revealed Cutthroat chipmaker competition seen. Average Rating: Processor Sales Are Back on Track Fourth-quarter jump sets records. Average Rating: New AMD Chips Target Desktop PCs Aimed at high-definition entertainment. Average Rating:

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