The legal battle between Qualcomm and Broadcom continues unabated. On the last day of 2007, Broadcom won an injunction against Qualcomm in their ongoing patent infringement battle. U.S. District Judge James Selna has barred Qualcomm from importing into the United States any 3G WCDMA cellular chipsets that infringe on the Broadcom patents in question. The ban affects chipsets that allow a handset from operating over two or more networks simultaneously, those that support push-to-talk functionality, and those with video processing capabilities. Some sales will be allowed though through January 2009 if Qualcomm pays Broadcom royalties.
Qualcomm will also have to pay additional mandatory royalties. These amount to 6 percent of all revenues that infringe on patent number 6,847,686, 4.5 percent for patent 5,657,317, and a yet to be determined amount for patent number 6,389,010.
Qualcomm has already indicated that it expects to have workarounds in place sometime in the first quarter of 2008.