Qualcomm’s shareholders have managed to achieve something that Apple and government regulators across the globe tried to and failed to do: get Qualcomm to pay up over its aggressive licensing practices.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Qualcomm said it would agree to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by shareholders, who claim that the company misled them about how its business practices worked and artificially inflated its stock price as a result. The settlement was earlier reported by Reuters.
Shareholders took issue with Qualcomm’s failure to fully disclose how it handled patent licensing. At the time, the company refused to license standard essential patents to certain competitors and in some cases made buying its chips a…