In latest development to the legal battle between Apple and Qualcomm, the former has asked the court to revise its existing lawsuit against the Cupertino giant to reflect new pieces of evidence that it says will reaffirm its case. The original lawsuit was filed in November last year.
Qualcomm's latest allegations accuse Apple of stealing "vast swaths" of trade secrets and other confidential information and sending them to Intel so that it could improve the performance of its chips used in iPhones.
Donald Rosenberg, Qualcomm's general counsel, said in an interview with CNBC:
"Unlawful use of Qualcomm's valuable trade secrets to try to help a competitor catch up irreparably harms us and must not be allowed to continue."
Qualcomm claims that this is based on the purported email correspondence and Apple's source code development history and the code used in devices running Intel's chipset. Now the company wants the Superior Court in San Diego to include these pieces of evidence in the lawsuit.
The original complaint accused Apple of breaching the master software agreement it signed with Qualcomm a few years ago. As part of that arrangement, Apple was expected to allow Qualcomm to check that its source code and other resources shared with the former were properly secured. However, Qualcomm claims that Apple had prevented the company from doing its own audit. The case is expected to be heard in April next year.
The longstanding legal dispute between the two companies began earlier last year after Apple sued Qualcomm for allegedly charging royalties for technologies the chip company had nothing to do with. In July 2017, Qualcomm retorted by slamming Apple with a lawsuit that sought to block the sale of iPhones in the U.S. over alleged patent infringement. It remains to be seen now how the latest legal battle between the two unfolds.
Source: CNBC
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