The Qualcomm antitrust ruling may well be reversed on appeal, say some legal experts, who think the chipmaker has ‘strong arguments’ on its side.

Qualcomm’s legal showdown with Apple may have fizzled out, but a separate case did go the distance. Earlier this month, the company lost a case brought by the FTC, and was ordered to renegotiate its licensing terms with smartphone makers.

However, that decision was based on a fairly obscure precedent involving a ski company, and some experts think it likely to be reversed …

Reuters reports that even one of the FTC’s own commissioners said the ruling was wrong, stretching the precedent too far.

The piece explains the basis for the ruling.

Wilson argued the court had misapplied this precedent.

But the Supreme Court created an exception to this rule in the 1985 case, known as “Aspen Skiing,” holding that exiting a profitable, time-tested business arrangement could be an violation of competition law.

As Koh’s ruling points out, Qualcomm once licensed its patents on industry-standard technology to rival chip makers, though the ruling does not make clear how extensive the practice was. Qualcomm abandoned the practice entirely in the early 2000s and began only licensing those patents to companies that make consumer devices such as smartphones, which contain chips.

Koh said Qualcomm’s about-face was “motivated by anticompetitive malice” and was the sort of conduct prohibited by Aspen Skiing.

In Aspen Skiing, a ski resort operator backed out of a profitable, long-standing agreement with a rival to jointly sell a combination lift ticket package.

The Supreme Court said the company appeared to be sacrificing immediate profits in hopes of stomping out a competitor in the long run.

Other experts disagree, however, and say that the Qualcomm antitrust ruling was a matter for debate, and an appeals court can only overturn a ruling in the case of ‘clear error,’ something which would be impossible to prove here.

Jonathan Barnett, a law professor at the University of Southern California, agreed that Koh’s decision was in danger of being overturned by an appeals court.

The exception created by Aspen Skiing was supposed to be “very narrow,” Barnett said.

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