Qualcomm sues Apple over infringement of chip software contract

Legal tensions between Apple and Qualcomm continue to escalate as the chipmaker has filed a new lawsuit against the Cupertino-based technology giant – this time accusing the company of violating a software license contract.

According to a report in Bloomberg, the suit, filed in California state court in San Diego, alleges Apple may have shared the proprietary code of Qualcomm's highly confidential software to aid Intel.

The software in question is required to allow mobile chips interact with rest of the device and connect to networks. Apple has been using chips from both Qualcomm and Intel (select models) for its iPhones.

In the latest complaint, the chip maker alleges that Apple has failed to draw a line between the engineering teams working with Qualcomm and Intel chips, respectively. Building on that claim, it said, back in July, the iPhone-maker requested proprietary information via email and copied that mail to an engineer working on the competing chip.

In another such instance, Qualcomm noted that an Apple engineer working on a competing chip requested his colleague to get information about data download tech from Qualcomm.

Apart from this, Qualcomm has also accused Apple of refusing the request for an audit to review its software handling method – another major obligation under the contract in question.

The two tech giants have been embroiled in a series of legal battles since January 2017. First, Apple sued Qualcomm for $1bn (£0.77bn) and stopped royalty payments to the company alleging it was charging for technologies it had nothing to with. Since then, Qualcomm has been fighting back, with injunctions against the sale of iPhones using its wireless tech as well as a lawsuit over patent infringement.

A Reuters report from earlier this week had also suggested that Apple would completely ditch Qualcomm's technologies from next year as a result of the ongoing tussles.