Qualcomm Dealt Another Setback Ahead of FTC Antitrust Trial

Kartikay Mehrotra, Bloomberg News

Components are displayed on a circuit board at the Qualcomm Inc. booth at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai in Shanghai, China, on Thursday, June 28, 2018. The exhibition runs through June 29. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Qualcomm Inc. can’t dodge a U.S. regulator’s claims that it acted as a monopolist in the mobile phone chip market by pointing out that Apple Inc. switched to Intel Corp. as its main supplier of modem chips, a judge said.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, is the second significant ruling against Qualcomm in five weeks ahead of a trial set for January over the Federal Trade Commission’s claims that the San Diego-based chipmaker abused a monopoly and raised costs for consumers. In November, Koh ruled that Qualcomm must provide its competitors with access to its patent licenses, should they request it.

The evidence about Apple and Intel doesn’t show “a change in Qualcomm’s own business conduct," Koh wrote. “All of the proposed evidence relates to alleged shifts in Qualcomm’s market power.”

Qualcomm spokeswoman Clare Conley declined to comment on Koh’s order.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in San Francisco at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg