Qualcomm files second suit against Broadcom

The patent dispute between chipmakers Qualcomm Inc. and Broadcom Corp. continues to heat up, with Qualcomm filing a second lawsuit against Broadcom.

Qualcomm's most recent suit, submitted last week in U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, charges Broadcom with infringing two of Qualcomm's patents. One of the patents describes an image-compression technology and the other video encoding and decoding.

The battle between the chipmakers began in May, when Broadcom filed a suit charging Qualcomm with infringing 10 of Broadcom's patents related to wired and wireless communications and multimedia processing technologies. At the same time, Broadcom also filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) suggesting that Qualcomm unfairly imports products that infringe Broadcom patents and requesting that the ITC investigate Qualcomm imports. Then in July, Broadcom filed a separate antitrust suit against Qualcomm. Shortly after, Qualcomm responded with its own suit against Broadcom charging infringement of seven Qualcomm patents.

Both companies make chips that power mobile devices. Qualcomm is best known for its mobile-phone technology and chips while Broadcom supplies chips for a wide variety of consumer electronics including networking equipment and digital entertainment devices as well as cell phones.