Nvidia Corp. wants Qualcomm Inc. to pay up for allegedly crushing a $352 million chipset acquisition, according to details of a London lawsuit made public this week.

Nvidia claims it was forced to wind down its cellular mobile broadband chipset business, including its Icera unit just four years after buying it, as a result of Qualcomm’s "unlawful abuse of dominance," according to documents released by a London court Tuesday.

Qualcomm’s alleged tactics led to "unexplained delays in customer orders, reductions in demand volumes and contracts never being entered into, even after a customer or mobile network cooperating with a prospective customer has agreed or expressed a strong intention to purchase" Nvidia’s chipsets, the company said in the lawsuit.

The compensation claim comes as European Union regulators step up antitrust investigations into Qualcomm sales tactics that officials said thwarted other designers of mobile-phone chip technology. Such objections can lead to fines or an EU order forcing a company to change its behavior.

The EU said Qualcomm may have charged below-cost fees for chips used in mobile Internet modems known as dongles from 2009 to 2011 to thwart smaller competitor Icera. Regulators are separately probing what they say are exclusivity payments Qualcomm paid to a phone and tablet manufacturer for using its designs.

Qualcomm, the largest maker of chips for mobile phones, is unique among semiconductor makers in that it gets most of its profit from licensing patents. Makers of handsets pay the company royalties, whether or not they use its chips. That lucrative profit pool has come under attack as governments around the world scrutinized Qualcomm’s business practices.

Qualcomm representatives declined to immediately comment. The San Diego, California-based company said last year it was “confident” it would prevail in both the EU investigation and the lawsuit.

Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia is seeking a declaration from the judge that Qualcomm’s conduct was an abuse of a dominant position, compensation, and an account of the profits it says Qualcomm gained from unlawful conduct, according to the court filings.

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved