FTC v. Qualcomm: The Sky Is NOT Falling

Judges can be too demanding of plaintiffs and thereby stymie meritorious cases, but that is not what happened in FTC v. Qualcomm. The FTC challenged several of Qualcomm’s patent licensing practices and sought to reduce the royalties it collected from makers of cellular devices. But the litigation failed to elicit a cogent economic theory explaining how the tactics Qualcomm used to obtain higher royalties had the effect of undermining competition among modem chip suppliers, as the FTC