Qualcomm is facing a FIVE WEEK trial in London, defending a claim that it has breached UK competition law by taking advantage of its dominance in the patent-licensing and chipset markets.
The trial has been brought by Which? – a high profile UK consumers’ association.
There are a lot of complex issues involved here, but one thing that caught my eye in Which?’s press release was a claim that:
“It was estimated that individual consumers could be due an average of around £17 per phone” (that’s about USD 23).
This is quite an extreme case of course – Qualcomm do have a very large market share so there are serious questions to be answered. There are various guardrails in place through competition/anti-trust laws and in patent laws to curb anti-competitive practices, so it will be interesting to see how effective these are in this complex case as it plays out.
I don’t want to promote anti-competitive practice, but even if overcharging is found, it’s quite thought provoking to have this quantified number showing the commercial value of IP – twenty-three bucks per phone is a larger chunk than I guess most people would expect!
If you are an innovator, what ROI do you expect to receive from your IP? Have you taken steps to get your portfolio in place and more importantly to make sure that it is aligned with your commercial aims and focused on generating revenue? Food for thought!
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