Qualcomm Moves for Summary Judgment in Antitrust MDL

Qualcomm is entitled to summary judgment in the antitrust multidistrict litigation against the chipmaker because the plaintiffs “have no evidence supporting a standalone exclusive dealing claim,” and that’s “all that remains” in the MDL, said Qualcomm’s motion Friday (docket 3:17-md-02773) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. The allegation “is no longer viable” that Qualcomm tried to “undercut” chip rivals by charging lower chip prices that it would then make up for through excess royalties, it said.

The plaintiffs purport to represent a class of consumers who bought a wide variety of cellphones in California between 2011 and 2018 and allege they were damaged by Qualcomm’s anticompetitive conduct. But they can offer “no competent evidence that would allow a reasonable jury to conclude that Qualcomm’s alleged exclusive dealing arrangement with Apple caused an antitrust injury,” said the motion. They also can’t show any alleged exclusive dealing arrangement “foreclosed a substantial share of any relevant market,” it said.

The plaintiffs also failed to provide any method by which a jury could determine a just and reasonable estimate of the damage, said the motion. Their expert witness offered no way to “disentangle the effects of lawful conduct from supposed damages caused by allegedly unlawful conduct,” it said. The plaintiffs also “can point to no competent evidence sufficient to raise a genuine issue of material fact that any alleged agreement between Qualcomm and any OEM other than Apple was exclusive, harmed competition” or caused the plaintiffs to suffer antitrust injury, it said.

Through the “protracted” litigation that began in 2017, the plaintiffs’ alleged damages “have always centered” on Qualcomm’s allegedly excessive standard-essential patent licensing royalties, said the motion. The plaintiffs “never asserted a damages theory based on chip prices, independent of royalties, being too high,” it said. Nor have they ever “alleged or sought to prove a standalone exclusive dealing claim,” it said.

Now that the court has dismissed everything but the exclusive dealing allegations, Qualcomm’s motion “attacks” the plaintiffs’ exclusive dealing allegations as if they had asserted them as “a standalone claim,” said the motion. But because the plaintiffs “never pleaded or pursued a standalone exclusive dealing claim,” nothing in the “long-closed record in this case” affords the plaintiffs “a basis to raise a material issue of fact,” it said. They are also unable to prove that the alleged exclusive dealing arrangements caused “anticompetitive harm, antitrust injury, or quantifiable damages,” it said.