South Korea’s antitrust watchdog said Wednesday that it has agreed to cooperate with the European Union on the possible abuse of essential patents by Qualcomm Inc., a dominant player in the global wireless telecommunications chip market.
The understanding reached at meeting between Shin Young-son, the Fair Trade Commission’s secretary general and Cecilio Madero Villarejo, the deputy director-general of antitrust at the EU’s Competition Directorate earlier in the week in Sejong, touches on problems related with essential patents in information and communication technology fields.
“The two sides dealt with the jurisdiction issue in regards to ICT cases,” the commission said.
The antitrust agency said that it is currently checking to see if Qualcomm violated the country’s competition act by demanding high fees for key patents used by smartphone manufacturers, but it failed to elaborate.
The San Diego-based company, which makes the Snapdragon series of processors that are the best-selling chips used in smartphones, is also a pioneer of the code division multiple access standard. CDMA is the world’s most widely used wireless network standard for mobile communication devices.
The FTC said that the both parties agreed to exchange information related to Qualcomm in the future.
The commission, meanwhile, pointed out that the EU actively engages patent probes even if European companies are not directly affected.
The FTC added the EU maintains the practice of preventing patent holders from filing a sales injunction if they did not actively try to reach a license agreement with users and clamps down on so-called patent ambushes.
Patent ambushes are practices where a patent holder intentionally hides details of intellectual property rights it controls until it has become an essential patent that others must use to comply with international standards. (Yonhap)
