In an antitrust case brought by the Federal Trade Commission that is now on appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held in FTC v. Qualcomm Inc. that Qualcomm violated the antitrust laws by engaging “in anti-competitive conduct by using its royalty rates to effectively impose a surcharge on its competitors’ chips.”[1]

Qualcomm, of course, is a major U.S. leader in technologies related to important aspects of cellular communications, including development of, and standard setting related to, 5G technology.