On August 11, 2020, a Ninth Circuit panel reversed the District
Court for the Northern District of California's judgment in FTC
v. Qualcomm, Inc. The panel held that Qualcomm's
conduct—(a) refusing to license its standards essential
patents (SEPs) to rival chipset manufacturers; (b) refusing to
supply chipsets to OEMs unless they first executed a license to its
SEPs ("no license, no chips"); and (c) making exclusivity
payments to Apple—was not anticompetitive. The panel did not
disturb the District Court's conclusions that Qualcomm had
monopoly power in the markets for code division multiple access
(CDMA) and premium long-term evolution (LTE) cellular modern
chipsets.
The panel's opinion had several key holdings:
