Qualcomm sues Apple claiming iPhone maker divulged its secrets to Intel

Breakdown between Apple and Qualcomm deepens over trade secrets claim

Aggressive semiconductor company Qualcomm has fired off a new lawsuit, this time aiming squarely at Apple and claiming that the electronics giant shared its proprietary technology with Intel.

That's according to Bloomberg, which reports that Qualcomm filed the suit against Apple on Wednesday in San Diego, California.

The lawsuit claims that Apple is in breach of a contract that governs the use of software needed to make chips work with other parts of a smartphone and claims the company isn't allowing an audit to review how the iPhone maker handles Qualcomm's software

Qualcomm also claims that Apple gave Intel access to key information about its technologies. It alleges that Apple asked it for confidential information about its chips and included an Intel engineer in the same email.

The chipmaker is seeking an award for "significant damages in an amount to be proven at trial".

This lawsuit suggests that there is no end in sight for the legal skirmish between the two companies, which began when Apple sued Qualcomm for $1bn and halted royalty payments to the company over complaints that Qualcomm was 'overcharging billions' for technologies that they had nothing to do with.

This lack of royalty payments is doing significant damage to Qualcomm's bottom line, as the chipmaker revealed earlier this week that its profits dropped 90 per cent year-over-year.

This lawsuit also comes just days after a report claimed that Apple could be planning to ditch Qualcomm chips in its 2018 hardware line-up. Instead, Apple is said to be testing modem chips from Intel and MediaTek.

Qualcomm denied the reports, however, saying in a statement that its modem for the next-gen iPhone has "already been fully tested and released to Apple," and added that it's "committed to supporting Apple's new devices."

Apple hasn't yet spoken out about Qualcomm's latest lawsuit filing, but Tim Cook recently spoke out about the firm's legal battle with Qualcomm.

"The reason that we're pursuing this is that Qualcomm‘s trying to charge Apple a percentage of the total iPhone value, and they do some really great work around standards-essential patents, but it's one small part of what an iPhone is," said Cook.

"It's not — it has nothing to do with the display or the Touch ID or a gazillion other innovations that Apple has done. And so we don't think that's right.

"And so we're taking a principled stand on it, and we strongly believe we're in the right. And I'm sure they believe that they are, and that's what courts are for. And we'll let it go with that."