Apple fails to produce documents in FTC lawsuit vs. Qualcomm, gets fined $25K per day

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins has ordered Apple to pay the court $25,000 each day that it fails to turn over certain documents related to the FTC's suit against Qualcomm. The court started adding up the fines on December 16th. The $25,000 is the amount of profit Apple made every 16 seconds during its last fiscal year. The company must turn over the documents by December 29th, or else it will be forced to pay a higher penalty amount for each day it doesn't turn over the documents.

Apple is not a party to the suit in which the FTC accuses the chip designer of allowing Apple to pay lower licensing fees in return for using Qualcomm chips exclusively. A few days after the FTC suit was filed, Apple filed its own suit against Qualcomm alleging that the chip designer had a monopoly on chips for mobile devices.

Apple claims that it will appeal the court's ruling even though the company says that it has already produced millions of documents related to this case, and plans on producing millions more. To be more precise, Apple alleges that it turned over more than 2.6 million documents by the December 15th deadline, and that Qualcomm is acting prematurely in putting the squeeze on the iPhone producer.


Qualcomm is currently the subject of an unsolicited takeover bid by rival chip designer Broadcom. The latter is offering  $105 billion, or a combination of $60 in cash and $10 a share in Broadcom stock, for each Qualcomm share.

source: Bloomberg