Qualcomm Antitrust Cases Heating Up At Ninth Circuit + The Law Behind A Paywall + Lyft Hits Patent Passenger With $500K Fee Bill

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Publish Date:
December 3, 2019
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Law.com - Skilled in the Art
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Summary

Qualcomm‘s IP licensing practices are back on the front burner. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments Monday in the $5 billion antitrust class action brought by consumers. And it’s scheduled a Feb. 13 hearing in San Francisco for the big kahuna: the FTC v. Qualcomm showdown over U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh‘s unprecedented injunction.

As I wrote Monday, Judges Jay Bybee and Ryan Nelson sounded inclined to at least dial back the nationwide class certified by Koh to smartphone purchases made in California, and perhaps other states that have “repealed” the Supreme Court decision on standing for indirect purchasers.

The FTC also has its own law professor amici, led by Stanford’s Doug Melamed and Mark Lemley and Georgetown’s Steven Salop. They note that Trinko held that “under certain circumstances” a refusal to cooperate with rivals can constitute anticompetitive conduct. “This case—in which Qualcomm made and later repudiated a promise to license all-comers—is one of those ‘circumstances,’” they argue.

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