The spat could knock TI’s recently announced plans to enter the mass market for CDMA off track.
The two companies signed a cross license agreement in December 2000, covering TI’s DSP and analog technology, and Qualcomm’s patents which underlie the CDMA wireless standard.
Qualcomm filed a suit late Friday accusing Dallas-based Texas Instruments of breaking a confidentiality provision of the deal. It is demanding that the agreement be terminated, and that it receive damages.
Qualcomm’s suit did not detail how TI breached the deal except to say that the breach occurred in early May. This is around the same time that TI announced an alliance with STMicroelectronics and Nokia to produce CDMA chipsets they plan to target at handset makers worldwide.
Lou Lupin, Qualcomm’s senior vice president general counsel, would not comment directly on how the suit related to the May agreement between TI, Nokia and STM. He did say that the agreement did not prohibit TI from working with third parties on CDMA-based products.
Rather, the suit had been brought because disclosures that shouldn’t have been made was by them in that time frame.
Lupin added that if the agreement is terminated, any CDMA-based products currently made by TI would risk breaching Qualcomm’s patents unless a new license deal was struck.
Lupin declined to quantify the amount of damages Qualcomm is seeking, except to say it was substantial in light of our company.
A spokeswoman for Texas Instruments said on Friday evening that the company had not seen the suit and could not yet comment.
Source: Computerwire
