Qualcomm Inc. v. Apple Inc.

I'll research this case systematically, starting with the Federal Circuit appeal and the underlying IPR.

Now let me dig into the specific 20-1560 docket and the underlying district court/ITC litigation.

Now let me verify the patent itself, the ITC component, and the broader litigation context.

Clarifying the posture first

One correction to the prior summary, now confirmed: No. 20-1560 is the appeal from IPR2018-01249. The Federal Circuit's judgment document states on its face that it is an "[a]ppeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2018-01249," captioned Qualcomm Incorporated, Appellant v. Apple Inc., Appellee, with Andrew Hirshfeld (Acting USPTO Director) as intervenor (Fed. Cir. Doc. 63, Feb. 9, 2021). That matters because this docket is not itself an infringement action — it is the patent owner's appeal of an adverse Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision. The infringement case in which the '002 patent was actually asserted was Qualcomm Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 3:17-cv-02398 (S.D. Cal., San Diego Division), before Judge Dana M. Sabraw and Magistrate Judge Mitchell D. Dembin.

Parties, technology, and patent

Qualcomm Incorporated is a San Diego–based, publicly traded semiconductor and wireless-technology operating company — a licensor and chip designer, not an NPE/PAE or university. It earns a large share of revenue from patent licensing and, in this period, held a portfolio Qualcomm described in its complaint as "more than 130,000 issued patents and patent applications worldwide." Apple Inc. is the accused device maker and, in the PTAB, the petitioner. This is therefore an operating-company-versus-operating-company dispute, and the '002 patent assertion ran alongside a much broader multi-forum Qualcomm–Apple campaign (district court, ITC, and European actions), not a standalone NPE suit.

The single patent in this appeal is U.S. Patent No. 7,693,002 B2, "Dynamic word line drivers and decoders for memory arrays" (inventor Jentsung Lin; assigned to Qualcomm; issued 2010). Technical sketch: the claims cover SRAM row-access circuitry in which first logic receives a clock and decodes a first portion of the memory address to apply the clock to a selected one of several clock outputs feeding a group of wordline drivers, while second logic decodes a second portion of the address to activate one particular driver in that group — splitting row decoding across two stages so that only one driver per group is in a dynamic evaluation state, cutting clock loading and power (illustrative claim 1, quoted in IPR2018-01249, Paper 6 at 4–5). The accused technology was Apple's iPhone/iPad devices and the Apple-designed processors' on-chip memory — i.e., the SRAM arrays and row decoders in Apple's A-series SoCs. Caveat: the precise accused-product list and the specific accused claim set are documented in the S.D. Cal./ITC record, and I could not pull the full PACER docket in this session to quote it; an ITC expert report in Inv. No. 337-TA-1093 refers to "Accused '002 Devices" and to claims 1–4, 7–9, 11, 17, 20–23, 31–33, and 36, but I have only secondhand access to that document and would treat the ITC linkage as probable rather than fully verified.

Procedural posture

Apple petitioned for IPR on June 18, 2018 (IPR2018-01249), challenging claims 1–28 and 31–37 on two § 103(a) grounds: Sato (U.S. 4,951,259) alone, and Asano (U.S. 2006/0098520 A1) in view of Itoh, VLSI Memory Chip Design (2001), under pre-AIA §§ 102/103. The Board (APJs Jefferson, Galligan, and Howard; Tech Center 2800, Art Unit 2827) instituted on all grounds on January 15, 2019, heard argument October 10, 2019, and on January 6, 2020 issued a final written decision holding all challenged claims unpatentable and granting Apple's motion to exclude Qualcomm's Exhibit 2004 (Paper 27). Qualcomm's March 4, 2020 notice of appeal raised both the § 103 merits and an Appointments Clause/Arthrex challenge to the APJs' appointment (Notice of Appeal), which is why the PTO Director intervened. On February 9, 2021, the panel (Reyna, Taranto, Stoll) affirmed without opinion under Fed. Cir. R. 36, a nonprecedential one-line disposition. Qualcomm was represented by Jones Day (Jennifer L. Swize argued); Apple by Fish & Richardson (Lauren A. Degnan argued). "Venue" here is the Federal Circuit's exclusive appellate jurisdiction over PTAB final written decisions under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A) — the geographically relevant venue for the underlying infringement claims was the Southern District of California, San Diego (Qualcomm's home forum), with a parallel ITC § 337 proceeding.

Why it is notable

The affirmance finally cancelled every challenged claim of the '002 patent — 34 of its 37 claims — and did so by Rule 36, generating no written law on the obviousness issues or on the Appointments Clause argument Qualcomm pressed. It also demonstrates that a PT

I'll research this case. Note upfront a likely framing issue: Fed. Cir. No. 20-1560 appears to be an IPR appeal, not a district-court infringement trial — let me verify.

Confirmed the framing issue. Let me dig into the PTAB record and the underlying district court / ITC tracks.

Framing correction (important)

The case metadata describes Fed. Cir. No. 20-1560 as "patent infringement litigation," but that is not what it is. No. 20-1560 is Qualcomm's appeal from a PTAB inter partes review final written decision — Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc., IPR2018-01249, on U.S. Patent No. 7,693,002 ("Dynamic word line drivers and decoders for memory arrays"). On appeal Qualcomm was the appellant, Apple the appellee, and the PTO Director intervened. The court affirmed on 2021-02-09 in a one-paragraph per curiam judgment under Fed. Cir. R. 36 (Reyna, Taranto, Stoll), with no written opinion.

This also resolves the open question in the existing case summary: the judgment expressly states "Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2018-0124[9]," and the docketing date (2020-03-13) matches Qualcomm's notice of appeal in IPR2018-01249 dated 2020-03-04. So No. 20-1560 is the appeal from IPR2018-01249. Sources: Fed. Cir. No. 20-1560, Doc. 63 (2021-02-09), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[4854953](/patent/4854953)/qualcomm-incorporated-v-apple-inc/; Docket, https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/cafc/20-1560; Qualcomm's Notice of Appeal (2020-03-04), https://insight.rpxcorp.com/federal_circuit/[829974](/patent/829974)/rpx-ptab/IPR2018-01249/IPR2018-01249___Notice_of_Appeal_b1e8b369d46e7332c9d07d2ab5e87e8e.pdf

Map of the requested categories to what actually exists:

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I. The two tracks that produced No. 20-1560

(A) The district court / ITC enforcement track (where '002 was asserted). On 2017-11-29 Qualcomm filed a complaint in the S.D. Cal. — Qualcomm Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 3:17-cv-02398-DMS-MDD — asserting 46 claims across five non-SEPs: the '356, '336, '674, '002 and '633 patents. The '002 patent was directed to the A10 Fusion chip's SRAM/wordline driver logic. Qualcomm's later motion to assert additional claims confirms that for the '002 patent it elected claims 2, 17 and 37. Source: Qualcomm's Memorandum ISO Motion to Assert Additional Claims, No. 3:17-cv-02398 (Dkt. 109), https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Southern_District_Court/3--17-cv-02398/Qualcomm_Incorporated_v._Apple_Incorporated/docs/109/1.pdf; AppleInsider, 2017-11-29, https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/29/qualcomm-targets-apple-iphone-8-iphone-x-in-new-patent-suit

On 2017-11-30 Qualcomm filed a mirror § 337 complaint at the ITC, which was instituted on 2018-01-03 as Inv. No. 337-TA-1093, Certain Mobile Electronic Devices and RF and Processing Components Thereof (II), on the '356, '336, '674, '002 and '633 patents. 83 Fed. Reg. 834 (2018-01-08), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/FR-2018-01-08/2018-00105

(B) The PTAB track. Apple petitioned for IPR of the '002 patent on 2018-06-18 (IPR2018-01249), challenging claims 1–28 and 31–37 on two § 103(a) grounds (pre-AIA law): (1) Sato (U.S. 4,951,259); (2) Asano (U.S. 2006/0098520) in view of Itoh, VLSI Memory Chip Design (2001). Notably, claims 29–30 were not challenged. Source: Pet. (Paper 2); FWD (Paper 27) at 1–2.

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II. Chronology of the PTAB proceeding and appeal

2018-06-18 — Petition filed. Apple challenges claims 1–28, 31–37. Qualcomm did not file a preliminary response — an unusual choice that removed one

I'll research press coverage of this case, starting with the specific appeal and underlying IPR, then verifying the listed articles.

Now let me verify the listed recent articles and search for coverage of the IPR/Federal Circuit stages.

Press coverage: very thin for this appeal, but contemporaneous coverage of the underlying assertion

Bottom line: I found essentially no press coverage of Federal Circuit No. 20‑1560 itself. The February 9, 2021 disposition was a one-paragraph Rule 36 judgment with no opinion, issued nearly two years after the parties' global settlement, and my searches across legal/trade press and mainstream tech outlets turned up no Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Law360, IPWatchdog, or Patently‑O article reporting the affirmance of the '002 final written decision. That is not surprising: the appeal was one of a large cluster of Qualcomm–Apple/Intel IPR appeals, and the Federal Circuit story in that window that did draw attention was Apple's Article III standing problem, not the merits of any single '002 obviousness ruling. The Supreme Court cert papers in the follow-on appeals describe that lead decision — Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc., 992 F.3d 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2021) ("Apple I") — as dismissing Apple's appeals for lack of standing after the 2019 settlement and license (Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc., cert. extension application, No. 21‑1327). So the honest answer is that the trade press did not cover the '002 affirmance at all.

What does exist is 2017–2019 coverage of the infringement assertion and the IPR filing. When Qualcomm filed the S.D. Cal. complaint on November 29, 2017, AppleInsider reported the new suit targeted the iPhone 8 and iPhone X and singled out U.S. Patent No. 7,693,002 for "Dynamic word line drivers and decoders for memory arrays," noting it "also relates to the A10, specifically SRAM memory unit logic." iDownloadBlog reported the following day that the filing alleged the A10 Fusion chip powering the iPhone 7 series infringed both the '674 and '002 patents, and listed the '002 among the asserted patents. Telecoms.com reported on December 1, 2017 that Qualcomm had filed three new complaints asserting 16 additional patents, listing 7,693,002 among them and quoting Qualcomm's statement that "[l]ike the patents we asserted at the ITC in July, all of the 16 patents are non-standards essential patents implemented outside of the modem." None of this coverage discussed claim scope, damages, or a royalty demand specific to the '002 patent — the outlets treated it as one item in a patent-number list.

On the PTAB track, a PTAB-focused commentary piece republished on Silicon Investor reported Apple's June 2018 IPR filings against U.S. Patents 7,693,002 and 8,665,239, noting the '002 was "filed in October 2006 and issued in April 2010" and offering the analyst-style take that the move "could well be the first time Qualcomm has been forced to defend its patents before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board" amid "a protracted, multinational dispute." That characterization is the outlet's own framing, not something in the Board's record. Chinese-language tech coverage reposted on PTT reported the January 2019 institution, stating that on January 15, 2019 the PTAB agreed to review three Qualcomm patents from the ITC case — including the '002, described as reducing device complexity and power — and identifying IPR2018‑01249 as covering claims 1–28 and 31–37. (Caveat: that item is a forum repost of a news article rather than an original outlet page, so I'd treat it as corroborative rather than authoritative.)

The ten recent articles supplied in the prompt do not concern this case, and I confirmed that for the ones I could check. The IPWatchdog "Other Barks & Bites" roundup of 2026‑10‑30 — IPWatchdog — covers the Federal Circuit's reversal of a $9.1 million § 285 fee award in ChromaDex v. Elysium, an IFRRO study on generative AI's effect on creators' earnings, and the Fifth Circuit's reversal in Motorola Mobility v. Advanced Standard Communication; I verified its contents through a syndicated summary at Vaquill and law-firm coverage of the ChromaDex ruling at Stinson, but I could not open the IPWatchdog page directly, so I am relying on those secondary confirmations. The Mactrast piece is about Taction Technology v. Apple — a September 2026 San Diego jury verdict of roughly $5.7 billion on two haptic-feedback patents (U.S. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117), with Taction seeking supplemental damages, 7% California prejudgment interest, and ongoing royalties through the September 24, 2035 patent expiry; that reporting traces to Reuters and is corroborated by MacRumors and 9to5Mac. The Digitimes article reports Qualcomm's September 24, 2026 announcement that it renewed its global patent license agreement with Apple effective April 1, 2027, with terms undisclosed. The only link between that last item and this case is genealogical: the renewed license descends from the April 16, 2019 global settlement that ended the district court action in which the '002 patent was asserted — but that settlement did not stop IPR2018‑01249, and by the time of the 2026 renewal the '002 patent's challenged claims had long since been cancelled. I did not verify the PCMag, Wordpress/Linux-phones, Wccftech, Tom's Hardware, Biztoc, Cult of Mac, or iLounge items, and on their face none appears to concern this litigation; I would not represent their contents without checking.

Sources

• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• Trials@uspto
• UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
• NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential
• Qualcomm argues that because Apple's license is to Qualcomm's entire portfolio, Apple's challenge to a few patents would not rel...
• Qualcomm Incorporated v. Apple Inc. – CourtListener.com
• Search court records on patent:(7693002)
• IN THE Supreme Court of the United States
• Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm, Incorporated
• PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Invalidation of Qualcomm’s integrated circuit device patent reversed on appeal
• Qualcomm's new anti-Apple suit targets new iPhones, A10 chip, dual-lens cameras & more
• Qualcomm targets Apple iPhone 8, iPhone X in new patent suit - On the heels of an Apple lawsuit claiming Qualcomm infringes on at least eight patents with its Snapdragon processors, Qualcomm ...

I'll research this Federal Circuit appeal and identify counsel of record for the plaintiff.

Key correction to note: in this appeal Qualcomm was the appellant (patent owner appealing IPR2018-01249), represented by Jones Day; Fish & Richardson represented Apple. Let me pull the docket and entry-of-appearance filings.

Counsel of Record — Plaintiff/Appellant Qualcomm Incorporated, No. 2020‑1560

Threshold correction on posture. In this appeal Qualcomm was not suing Apple for infringement; it was the appellant and patent owner, appealing the PTAB's Final Written Decision in Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc., IPR2018‑01249 (Paper 27, Jan. 6, 2020), which held claims 1–28 and 31–37 of U.S. Patent No. 7,693,002 unpatentable. The Rule 36 judgment confirms this: "Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2018‑01249." Apple was the appellee/petitioner. This resolves the uncertainty flagged in the earlier case summary — No. 20‑1560 is the appeal from IPR2018‑01249.

Disposition: Affirmed, per curiam (Reyna, Taranto, Stoll, JJ.), under Fed. Cir. R. 36, Feb. 9, 2021, Doc. 63. Oral argument was held and audio posted Feb. 5, 2021.

Qualcomm's counsel of record (sole firm: Jones Day)

Source for all names: Qualcomm Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 2020‑1560, Doc. 63 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 9, 2021) (per curiam judgment), at 1–2 — "JENNIFER L. SWIZE, Jones Day, Washington, DC, argued for appellant. Also represented by ROBERT BREETZ, DAVID B. COCHRAN, DAVID MICHAEL MAIORANA, JOSEPH M. SAUER, Cleveland, OH; MATTHEW JOHNSON, JOSHUA R. NIGHTINGALE, Pittsburgh, PA; ISRAEL SASHA MAYERGOYZ, Chicago, IL." See also Docket, No. 20‑1560 (docketed Mar. 13, 2020) (appellant Qualcomm Incorporated; appellee Apple Inc.); Patent Owner's Notice of Appeal, IPR2018‑01249 (Mar. 4, 2020) (Nightingale, Jones Day, for Qualcomm).

What the record does not show

• No local counsel. The Federal Circuit does not require local counsel, and none appears in the judgment or the Rule 47.4 certificate of interest.
• No in-house Qualcomm attorney listed of record. Qualcomm's legal department does not appear in the counsel block; the appeal was run entirely out of Jones Day. (Qualcomm's in-house patent counsel occasionally enter appearance in PTAB matters, but I found no such entry here.)
• No separate PTAB-only firm. Unlike some Apple-side arrangements, Qualcomm used one firm (Jones Day) at the Board and on appeal.
• The full PACER docket (including the individual Entry of Appearance forms, Docketing Statement, and briefs for 20‑1560 specifically) is not freely mirrored — Justia's docket capture stops at the March 13, 2020 docketing notice — so the designation of "principal/lead" versus "of counsel" above is inferred from the judgment's ordering, the argument assignment, and the Rule 47.4 filings in the consolidated companion appeals, not from a formal lead-counsel designation in 20‑1560.

For contrast — opposing and government counsel in the same appeal

• Apple Inc. (appellee): Lauren Ann Degnan, Fish & Richardson P.C., Washington, D.C. (argued); Ashley Bolt, Atlanta, GA; Robert Courtney, Minneapolis, MN. Fish also held Apple's PTAB representation in IPR2018‑01249 (W. Karl Renner, Thomas A. Rozylowicz, Timothy W. Riffe, Kenneth J. Hoover, Whitney A. Reichel).
• Intervenor (USPTO): Mai‑Trang Duc Dang, Office of the Solicitor, with Thomas W. Krause, Farheena Yasmeen Rasheed, and Meredith Hope Schoenfeld.

Bottom line

Apple Inc.'s counsel of record in No. 20-1560 was Fish & Richardson P.C. — led by Lauren A. Degnan (Washington, D.C.), who argued the case on February 5, 2021, and supported by Ashley Bolt (Atlanta) and Robert Courtney (Minneapolis), exactly as recited in the Rule 36 judgment issued February 9, 2021. No in-house Apple attorney appears of record in the Federal Circuit papers I could locate.

One framing correction first. Despite the caption metadata ("Qualcomm Inc. v. Apple Inc.," plaintiff/defendant), No. 20-1560 is not an infringement suit — it is a patent-owner appeal from an IPR. Qualcomm was the appellant/patent owner; Apple was the appellee/petitioner. Apple's involvement was as petitioner in Apple Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc., IPR2018-01249 (U.S. Patent No. 7,693,002), where the Board held claims 1–28 and 31–37 unpatentable (Paper 27, Jan. 6, 2020). The Federal Circuit affirmed per curiam (Reyna, Taranto, Stoll) in a nonprecedential disposition on Feb. 9, 2021.

This also resolves the open question flagged in the prior sections of this summary. The connection between No. 20-1560 and IPR2018-01249 can now be verified: Qualcomm's Notice of Appeal in IPR2018-01249 is dated March 4, 2020 — the same date the Federal Circuit docket says the appeal was "Received: 03/04/2020" before docketing on March 13, 2020 — and that Notice of Appeal was served on Fish & Richardson as "counsel of record for petitioner," naming W. Karl Renner, Thomas A. Rozylowicz, Timothy W. Riffe, Kenneth J. Hoover and Whitney A. Reichel. The judgment itself recites "Appeal from the … Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2018-01249."

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Apple Inc. — counsel of record at the Federal Circuit (per the Fed. Cir. judgment, Doc. 63)

Note on the judgment's counsel line: the appellee's block reads "LAUREN ANN DEGNAN … argued for appellee. Also represented by … ASHLEY BOLT, Atlanta, GA; ROBERT COURTNEY, Minneapolis, MN." Because the publicly indexed text of the order is line-wrapped/elided in places, I cannot rule out that one additional non-principal name appears in that block; the three above are the names I could confirm verbatim from the order text.

Apple's PTAB-level counsel in IPR2018-01249 (context for who ran the case)

These Fish & Richardson attorneys are identified in Qualcomm's March 4, 2020 Notice of Appeal as Apple's "counsel of record for petitioner," i.e., the trial-level team whose work product the Federal Circuit reviewed:

What I could not verify

• No in-house Apple counsel of record. Nothing in the judgment, the Justia docket snapshot, or the PTAB papers identifies an Apple legal-department attorney as counsel of record in No. 20-1560. Apple's practice in these IPRs was to litigate through outside counsel (Fish & Richardson). I would not name any in-house lawyer without a filing.
• No "local counsel" in the Rule 47.3 sense — the Federal Circuit has no local-counsel