
Qualcomm accuses Apple of giving its chip secrets to Intel - sahin-boydas
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/25/qualcomm-accuses-apple-of-giving-its-chip-secrets-to-intel.html
======
wyldfire
We've heard bits of this before [1] but maybe discovery is confirming some of
qualcomm's theories.

> Qualcomm claims it has reason to believe Apple flouted its rules, and cites
> an incident in which an Apple engineer CC'ed an Intel engineer in a message
> containing confidential material. The chipmaker also says Apple engineers
> working with competitive vendors merely obscured references to Qualcomm in
> messages rather than restricting the flow of protected data.

[1]
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/02/qualcomm_sues_apple...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/02/qualcomm_sues_apple/)

~~~
baxtr
That’s hardly “stealing”, though. Sounds more like “really dumb mistake”.

~~~
vvanders
I've been the point engineer in these types of interactions(over on the GPU
space, but still plenty of IP to worry about there).

You're _very_ , _very_ careful to make sure this doesn't happen, up to and
including having two discrete teams that work with different vendors to make
sure it doesn't happen(sometimes mandated by contracts).

In my last gig where I did this our group was the one part of the company that
most vendors came to precisely because we didn't disclose techniques or
approaches. Someone just casually mentioning "Vendor X" does Texture
Compression with "Y" in discussions is enough to get them to never talk to
your engineers again.

(I've seen very senior engineers do this in order to try and move the needle
with a vendor only to completely sabotage the whole relationship without even
realizing it.)

~~~
drakonka
Not quite the same level but I remember before gen 4 game consoles were
announced, for a while the NDA hoops we had to jump through and the care we
had to take when discussing them internally was intense. For a long time we
just called them "gen4a" and "gen4b" (a legacy that still lives in our code
base to this day), and you weren't allowed to verbalise which one was which.
This was followed by more code words, so you then had to remember which code
name matched up with gen4a and which one was gen4b. SDK and firmware drops
were strictly locked down of course, and we had to hide the dev kits when any
kind of video crew or photography was taking place around our work areas even
though the kits were pretty much unrecognisable and even if it was for an
internal purpose (but that's to be expected, anyway). Also you could not stack
one particular kit on top of the other one because it was known to overheat
faster than a pug in summer.

~~~
vvanders
Oh yeah, I was in gamedev before this and NDA process back then was quite
involved. These days with the ability to run on production hardware that's a
lot less restricted.

I'd say that SoC vendors are a bit more strict about NDAs vs GameDev where it
was pretty wide knowledge who worked on what. Once you were in the industry
there were very few secrets given how small it is.

------
tooltalk
what's up with all these glaring defense of Apple?

Apple's success has been narrowly focused in on designing, marketing, and a
few technical areas -- wireless tech pioneered and dominated by the likes of
Qualcomm, Ericsson, etc for decades is not where Apple's strength lies.

Further, Apple has been accused and convicted of orchestrating ebooks price-
fixing ($450M fine in 2016) and colluding with other tech companies not to
poach each others' employees (another $450M fine for all tech companies
involved in 2015). A US jury also found Apple willfully infringed VirnetX's
IP's (ie, facetime VPN OD). So yeah, sure, Apple, however big or successful,
is fully capable of engaging in unethical, anti-competitive/trust, illegal
activities to gain advantage over others.

Also, let's not forget, Qualcomm's lawsuit (or counter-suit) is just a small
subplot of the greater feud between Apple and the wireless industry. Apple,
having challenged the wireless industry for a full decade and lost or settled
every lawsuit (and failed to squeeze their wireless suppliers), allegedly
colluded with mobile OEMs around the world to launch regulatory attacks
against Qualcomm. Sure, there are some aspects of Qualcomm's licensing
practices that are clearly illegal/anti-competitive (especially respect to
their chipset competitors), but Apple's direct accusation (eg, kickback for
exclusivity, violation of FRAND -- unreasonable royalty basis and rates) is
probably just blatant lies that Apple fabricated to rile up regulators in
South Korea, EU, and Taiwan. It's no wonder that Qualcomm is so pissed off and
they are engaged in a bitter lawsuit over frivolous IP theft that Qualcomm
would have looked away otherwise.

~~~
threeseed
1\. We have no evidence that Apple did anything wrong. And so until a court
rules either way we should default to them being innocent.

2\. Qualcomm is unquestionably more dodgy than Apple. They have been convicted
of market abuse and have engaged in anti-competitive practices for quite some
time now. I don't think anyone should feel sympathy for them.

3\. You have made unfounded allegations that Apple lied to countries around
the world. So I would question your bias in this case.

~~~
GeekyBear
Qualcomm has been found guilty in two separate antitrust actions recently in
the EU, with a third antitrust action getting underway in the last couple of
months.

They are currently the subject of another antitrust action in the US.

In addition, several other nations have recently found them guilty in
antitrust actions of their own.

Given their behavior, and the Billions in fines they have recently been
ordered to pay for said illegal behavior, I'm not certain why anyone would
still be willing to accept their claims without proof.

------
zyztem
Last year S/A wrote pretty interesting article about this situation:
[https://semiaccurate.com/2017/11/06/qualcomm-opens-apple-
leg...](https://semiaccurate.com/2017/11/06/qualcomm-opens-apple-legal-
filing/)

~~~
protomyth
_As another example, an Apple engineer working on a competitive vendor’s
product asked an Apple engineer working on Qualcomm’s product to request
assistance from Qualcomm relating to a downlink decoding summary for carrier
aggregation._

 _On February 28, 2017, Qualcomm requested an audit under the MSA. To date,
despite Qualcomm’s repeated requests, Apple has refused to permit Qualcomm to
audit Apple’s compliance with the provisions of the MSA. Qualcomm seeks
specific performance of Apple’s obligations under the MSA to provide
sufficient information to Qualcomm to confirm that Apple has at all times
complied with its obligations related to Qualcomm’s software._

Those, if true, are not going to go well in a court. The section gets worse
and worse the farther you read.

------
swiley
Ehh, the secrets that were shared really should be public anyway. Qualcomm
have single handedly distorted the American mobile device market by working
trade secrets and patents into the LTE standard.

~~~
astrodust
Qualcomm's ridiculousness with things like CDMA set back the American wireless
industry almost a decade.

~~~
ddoolin
I'd like to learn more, any recommendations/links?

~~~
skunkworker
[https://www.patentprogress.org/2017/01/27/no-listen-
qualcomm...](https://www.patentprogress.org/2017/01/27/no-listen-qualcomm/)

    
    
      I wrote about the KFTC action recently, in which the KFTC fined Qualcomm about $850 million and ordered it to stop its abusive licensing practices. The KFTC found that Qualcomm dominated the pool of essential patents for the CDMA cellular phone standard, and it used those patents to monopolize the market for CDMA chipsets:
    
      It refused to license to competitors, even though as part of the standard-setting process, Qualcomm had committed to license to anyone on fair and reasonable terms

It forced handset companies to separately take a patent license if they wanted
to buy Qualcomm chips. That was on top of the purchase price for the chips. It
forced handset companies to give Qualcomm licenses to their own patents, for
free.

[https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/10/11/qualcomm-antirust-
war-...](https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/10/11/qualcomm-antirust-war-patent-
licensing-issues/id=88891/)

------
ksec
And we have reasons to believe either the Intel Modem or its Antenna Design
are not working as well as expected.

[1] [https://www.wiwavelength.com/2018/09/antennagate-reduxs-
if-s...](https://www.wiwavelength.com/2018/09/antennagate-reduxs-if-so-what-
can-apple.html)

~~~
snaky
> Intel needed to deliver a modem that would rival Qualcomm for several years
> already and possibly had to cut some corners to show faster LTE speeds

[https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-the-mobile-
reception...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-the-mobile-reception-on-
the-xs-max-even-worse-than-iphone-x.2140854/page-22#post-26563951)

------
pyb
Similarly, I was expecting the GPU situation to come to a head, meaning :
Imagination technologies starting a lawsuit. The fact that this hasn't yet
happened, led some commentators to conclude that a confidential Apple-IMG
settlement has taken place.

------
cpeterso
What information gleaned from Qualcomm code would actually be useful or
applicable to Intel improving their totally different hardware?

~~~
tjalfi
Device drivers and firmware often contain workarounds for bugs in other
products.

Here[0] is an example from Windows Vista.

[0]
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060330-31/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060330-31/?p=31723)

------
Zigurd
The headline doesn't match this statement, which makes more sense: "Apple
engaged in a years-long campaign of false promises, stealth and subterfuge
designed to steal Qualcomm’s confidential information and trade secrets for
the purpose of improving the performance of lower-quality modem chipsets."

The complaint could amount to Apple having characterized the performance of
Qualcomm's products in a way Qualcomm believes is not allowed. It is unlikely
Apple literally broke into Qualcomm's R&D infrastructure and stole source
code.

------
pankajdoharey
This is the same Qualcomm whose CEO said Apples 64 bit A7 is a gimmick!

~~~
interdocken
No.. ironically he[1] is one of the finalists[2] in the running for the CEO
position at Intel.

[1][https://www.slashgear.com/qualcomms-cmo-anand-
chandrasekher-...](https://www.slashgear.com/qualcomms-cmo-anand-
chandrasekher-reassigned-censured-following-a7-gimmick-lambasting-26303193/)
[2][https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/09/05/intel-
ce...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/09/05/intel-ceo-
candidates-shortlist-intc.html)

~~~
stefan_
I take it anti-competes and lawsuits over forwarded vague emails are only for
the scrubs.

------
pankajdoharey
Assuming there is something that is similar or copied in Intel Chips that came
from Qualcomm, isnt it protected by Copyright and Patents already? Besides,
Almost everything in hardware can be reverse engineered, there isn't a trade
secret than cannot be unravelled just by analysing the output of the chips.
Hell Cyrix did just that in the previous century to create better chips than
Intel. There isnt a reason why Apple would do something which Intel can do on
its own.

~~~
jiveturkey
> isnt it protected by Copyright and Patents already?

No. Generally this is trade secret territory.

> Almost everything in hardware can be reverse engineered,

Not in time to get a RE'd product to market before it's obsolete. We are
talking about very, very complex designs.

------
bsimpson
> Apple engaged in a years-long campaign of false promises, stealth and
> subterfuge designed to steal Qualcomm’s confidential information and trade
> secrets for the purpose of improving the performance of lower-quality modem
> chipsets

I'm so skeptical whenever I read something like that. Even on small scales,
deceit and conspiracy are rare. They seem even more unlikely at a company with
the scale, success, and talent of Apple. Coordinated corporate espionage would
be a Really Big Deal, and something I doubt Apple would risk over modem
performance. (VW's diesel scandal is the closest thing I can think of. Of
course, there are other examples in finance like Enron.)

Maybe I'm biased from my experience at Google. (I know they're a favorite HN
punching bag, but we try really hard to do the right thing regarding PII,
privacy, ethics, etc.) I can't imagine anyone with the power to condone a
trade secret stealing conspiracy at a company like Apple would do so.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

~~~
davidw
I agree it's good to be skeptical, but that's hardly the first large-scale
shady thing some of these places have been involved in:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-judge-
approves-415-mill...](https://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-judge-
approves-415-million-settlement-in-tech-worker-lawsuit-2015-9)

~~~
bsimpson
Fair point. Still, a gentleman's agreement between frienemy titans of industry
(though illegal) is understandable: "Don't take my guys, and I won't take
yours".

I have a hard time believing someone at Apple said "let's engage in a multi-
year conspiracy to siphon Qualcomm trade secrets to Intel."

~~~
adventured
That's not a gentleman's agreement. It's the exact opposite when you actually
consider the target of abuse in the agreement: their own employees, people,
whose lives they were seeking to actively harm.

If they'll actively, illegally, seek to harm their own people, who could
question whether they'd illegally try to harm a competing company? It makes
perfect sense that that would be in the realm of consideration.

~~~
posterboy
You can also see it differently: When the supply is locked out, they have to
compete on price harder from the beginning and have less opportunity to fire.
If there's an oversupply, of course it's a bit different.

------
PascLeRasc
What does Qualcomm have to gain from making public statements about
allegations like this? Isn't it like talking to the police voluntarily, where
it could only hurt your position?

~~~
protomyth
Stock price, probably. Plus, frighten off anyone else thinking of jumping ship
to Intel.

------
wemdyjreichert
Nobody can yet say for sure, but this smells like sour grapes from an ex-
vendor who just lost a very large buyer.

------
virtualadmin
If only it actually helped intel make better chips.

~~~
5874-4b22-a4e0
Maybe Intel was in an even worse position.

------
product50
Yeah - because a company like Apple doesn't know taking away source code and
giving it away to a competitor like Intel is a gross violation of any legal
standard out there. And Intel, on their part, would be like sure, give it to
us because this is totally cool!

I bet this is a narrative fueled up by Qualcomm vs. any basis in reality. If
it is real, then most likely this was done inadvertently.

~~~
guyzero
"If it is real, then most likely this was done inadvertently."

That's probably not going to help much, even if it is true.

~~~
product50
Read my first sentence too.

~~~
guyzero
No one cares why someone broke a law.

------
baq
looks like an attempt to direct attention from something else. the quotes read
like they were said by politicians running for posts instead of a business
commenting on a lawsuit.

~~~
slededit
I'd imagine they were heavily vetted by corporate lawyers given this is the
start of a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

~~~
jsjohnst
> start of a multi-million dollar lawsuit

1\. This isn’t the start, it’s been ongoing for over a year

2\. Add a few more zeros to that number.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/25/qualcomm-apple-stole-
source-c...](https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/25/qualcomm-apple-stole-source-
code/), which points to this.

------
gsich
Qualcomm is just mad. Their attitude to hide everything behind NDA, even most
basic tools and documentation sucks.

Examples: QMI Documentation, DM-Port Tools, drivers for all of their Android
phone related stuff.

------
nutjob2
Sounds like an excuse for a fishing expedition.

Qualcomm seems to be aspiring to be the new Rambus.

