Until the patents squeak

摘要

"SHOULD five per cent appear too small, be thankful I don't take it all." The Beatles wrote "Taxman" in1966 to protest at Harold Wilson's exorbitant "supertax" rates. Critics of Qualcomm, the world's biggest chip-design firm, would say the lyric is a clue to the company's business practices. Its methods have attracted a barrage of legal complaints. The latest came on January 25th, when Apple, a smartphone maker, sued it in China for abusing its clout in mobile processors and demanded 1bn yuan ($145m) in damages. Just days earlier Apple had filed a similar lawsuit in California asking for $1bn.