Hello and welcome to another MLEX podcast. I'm Amy Miller, Mlex's senior privacy and data security reporter in San Francisco, California.

The high-stakes antitrust trial pitting the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against

cellular chipmaker Qualcomm is underway in a federal courtroom in Silicon Valley.

For three days, the two sides of dug-in, presenting diametrically opposed viewpoints on Qualcomm's

dominance in the market for modem chips for high-end wireless devices.

The trial is less than halfway complete and Qualcomm has yet to offer its own evidence,

but there's still plenty to break down.

Here today to bring us up to speed on what's happening is M-Lex senior correspondent Josh

Cisco, who's been at the trial every day, and Mike Swift, chief global digital risk correspondent who's

been helping out. Hi Josh and Mike. Hi Amy. Hey Amy. So Josh, first off, remind us what

this legal fight is all about. So the Federal Trade Commission is challenging how Qualcomm is licensing

certain patents that are for cellular communications.

Qualcomm's, a lot of Qualcomm's technology are used in standards,

which confer on it an obligation to license differently than other patents,

and the Federal Trade Commission is saying that they have not lived up to that obligation.

Chief among the allegations are this policy that Qualcomm has where they won't sell

customers' chips unless the customers also take a license, and the FTC says that Qualcomm uses

threats of cutting off chip supply until they get the licensing terms that they want.

And Qualcomm counters that they have never cut off chip supply, that the two units are separate,

that the licensing arm of the company doesn't have the power to cut off chip supply,

and that that would impact relationships with their customers, some of the largest mobile

device makers in the world, like Apple, Samsung, Wallway, and Huawei.

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