Oh dear, looks like Qualcomm has been a bad boy! Last year Qualcomm was banned from selling various 3G chips which infringed on Broadcom patents if you recall.

Well apparently Qualcomm obviously didn’t see the ban as an actual ban because they continued right on selling, actually they continued right up to the point where a judge decided Qualcomm were in contempt for violation the injunction.

The resulting decision means Qualcomm has been ordered to fork over gross profits from the sales of their QChat push-to-talk to Broadcom…ouch!

The court gave Qualcomm 30 days grace to work out just how much they own Broadcom; Sprint forked over $93 million to use the technology since last December.

So one can assume quite safely that this little episode is going to cost Qualcomm more than a few peanuts. However, Qualcomm is planning on staging an appeal, so this could be yet another long drawn out battle.

Source — Reuters via Engadget