The lawsuit has been fought for seven years, and the case of Apple Qualcomm infringing Caltech Communications Patent is settled.

According to reports on the afternoon of August 11, Beijing time, the California Institute of Technology sued smartphone maker Apple and mobile processor maker Qualcomm earlier, accusing each other of infringing their own patents on wireless communication chips used in electronic devices. On Thursday, Caltech reached an "intentional settlement agreement" with the defense, according to documents from a federal court in the United States.

In the earliest trial in the grass-roots court, Caltech won, and the court ordered Qualcomm and Apple to pay $1.1 billion (currently about 7.953 billion yuan) in economic losses, but the verdict was later overturned by the appeals court.

The California Institute of Technology and the defendant filed a document with the Federal District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, including the intentional settlement, but the details of the settlement were not disclosed. It is not clear whether the settlement includes both Apple and Qualcomm defendants.

Caltech, Apple and Qualcomm did not comment on the report. It is reported that the court has required the parties to submit further reports on the status of the parties by 18 August.

California Institute of Technology is located in Pasadena, California. In 2016, the school sued Apple and Qualcomm in court. The indictment mentions that millions of smartphones, tablets and smartwatches sold by Apple use Qualcomm's wireless network communications chips that infringe the California Institute of Technology's wireless communications patents.

In the first trial in 2020, the grass-roots court ruled in favor of Caltech, demanding that Apple provide $837.8 million in financial compensation to the school, while Qualcomm had to provide $270 million in financial compensation. The two tech giants paid a total of more than $1.1 billion.

Qualcomm and Apple appealed against the verdict. In 2021, an American appeals court overturned the decision of a grass-roots court. The appellate court found the patent infringement damages required by Apple and Qualcomm to be legally untenable and asked the grass-roots court to retry the amount of the damages.

The lawsuit was originally scheduled for retrial in June this year, but in May, the trial was postponed indefinitely.

It should be pointed out that Apple and Qualcomm are not the only well-known companies that have been sued by Caltech and accused of infringing wireless communications patents. Previously, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Samsung Electronics have also been sued for the same crime.

On Tuesday, the California Institute of Technology informed a federal district court in Texas that it had reached a settlement with the defendant Samsung Electronics of South Korea.

Patent infringement lawsuits between Caltech and Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Dell are still ongoing.