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Qualcomm has accused Apple of stealing secrets about its chips. According to the accusation, Apple would have given those secrets to competitor Intel. Intel makes chips for Apple. Qualcomm would have missed billions of dollars because of the theft, reports Reuters.

The accusations are contained in a court document. Qualcomm and Apple have been arguing for some time about the use of secret software from the chip manufacturer to share information with Intel. This has been the subject of a court case since November last year.

So now Qualcomm says that Apple has stolen trade secrets, as part of a “multi-year campaign of sloppy, inappropriate and deceptive practices,” designed to improve competitors’ chips and move all the business it did with Qualcomm to Intel.

According to the complaint, Apple used tools to open Qualcomm’s so-called ‘log files’. Then it would have given the files to Intel engineers. Log files contain rules of data generated by hardware or software. Engineers often use them to find technical problems and improve the performance of a chip.

“Intel engineers even complained to Apple engineers that they couldn’t open the files because they didn’t have the right tools,” said the chip manufacturer in the complaint. “In response, Apple engineers routinely used Qualcomm tools to create already processed log files, which they sent to Intel engineers.

Apple refused to respond to the accusation.

Legal battle

The two companies have been arguing for a long time. Qualcomm provided parts for the iPhone, but Apple says it’s overcharged with royalties. Apple claims to have created other applications themselves, so they no longer need the chip manufacturer. But according to Qualcomm, their technology is still being used, which means that Apple is infringing their patents.

The chip manufacturer wants Apple to pay money, but Apple refuses. Therefore, Apple was indicted, as well as the suppliers of the iPhone maker. The suppliers then decided to start their own legal proceedings against Qualcomm.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.