The Fair Trade Commission (FTC), which found out the Qualcomm’s overuse of power related to patent and imposed a fine of 1 trillion won on the global ICT company, has been negligent of its supervision on the “correction order.”
Although it has been two years since the commission's order to correct the situation, Qualcomm's implementation of the order was made for only one company. Although the FTC has been investigating for more than two years and creating an opportunity to correct order in the international telecommunication market, it is still sitting on the sidelines for important corrective measures.
In December 2016, the FTC imposed a fine of 1.03 trillion won on Qualcomm, saying that the company made unfair trade by using its monopolistic status of mobile communication-related SEP (Standard Prerequisite Patents). And it placed the three correction orders, including the one to faithfully engage in negotiations on patent licensing contract with companies that make modem chipsets such as Intel, MediaTek and Samsung Electronics.
The media focused on the fine amount of 1 trillion won, but the industry expressed expectations that the change to be brought by the correction order will be much bigger.
Two years have passed, but the result is insignificant. According to the FTC's data on Qualcomm's implementation of correction order that the Hankyoreh newspaper obtained through Rep. Chun Hae-chul of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, Qualcomm signed a correction contract for patent licenses related to mobile phones and infrastructure equipment' only with Samsung Electronics in February this year
LG Electronics, Intel, Apple, Huawei, MediaTek and others have yet to sign a revised contract with Qualcomm.
This is due to the FTC's lukewarm attitude. According to the FTC's data, the FTC has not taken any measures for eight months since it confirmed the status of implementation of corrective orders in February, September and November 2017 and received notification from Qualcomm in February this year that it had signed a revised contract with Samsung.
Qualcomm filed a lawsuit in late 2016 in defiance of the FTC's imposition of the fee and corrective order, and in November last year, the Supreme Court rejected Qualcomm's request to suspend the efficacy of corrective order.
