Qualcomm wins again on chips and royalties as UK competition collective action is withdrawn

The UK collective proceedings regime received another indication today of the challenges to standalone abuse of dominance claims, as Which? (the Consumers Association) today announced that it was abandoning its claim against Qualcomm, after 5 years of proceedings. To date, Kent v Apple remains the only case to result in a finding of infringement at the first instance judgment (Apple is seeking leave to appeal the judgment). 

A drop-hands settlement is rare at the post-trial stage, when almost all of the costs have been incurred, and is an indication of the degree of weakness of the class representative's position. It is also yet another indication that stating a claim at the certification stage (at least at the standard that initially applied following the Supreme Court judgment in Merricks) is considerably easier than evidencing infringement at trial. With recent judgments, including notably a more recent decision of the Supreme Court in Evans v Barclays at the end of 2025, a stronger gatekeeper role for the CAT is being reasserted, which may result in fewer claims proceeding to trial. A key case management challenge will be to ensure continuing review of cases which are permitted to proceed, through the disclosure and evidence phases. 

With hindsight, was the writing was already on the wall in the claim against Qualcomm at the stage of certification? 

One possible area of weakness was the extent of the class representative's reliance on various overseas competition law findings relating to Qualcomm. With a couple of exceptions, many of these investigations ultimately resulted in Qualcomm being exonerated (notably the US FTC infringement finding was vacated on appeal). The UK Supreme Court in Evans has recently confirmed that it is not permissible to rely on factual findings by other tribunals in proceedings before the Tribunal in any event (applying the usual rule of evidence for civil proceedings in Hollington v Hewthorn). However, claimants or class representatives are likely to continue to seek to derive some plausibility for their claim from European Commission infringement decisions, particularly in circumstances where the CMA is not prioritising parallel investigations. Such investigations will also likely continue to be of significant relevance to the scope of the disclosure ordered in the proceedings, as in this case.

More salient is Qualcomm's objection at the CPO stage that it would not be possible for the Tribunal to draw a causal link between its upstream royalty rates and the downstream consumer cost of the mobile devices incorporating its technology (and chipsets). At the certification stage, Qualcomm particularly criticised the lack of any proposal to obtain evidence from Apple and Samsung themselves, but at the time the Tribunal considered it unrealistic for Which?'s litigation plan to make provision for “every evidence-gathering step that might be taken in the course of lengthy proceeding”. It is not evident from the public material about the case that such disclosure was provided, although there was a late application for disclosure of material from the Optis v Apple proceedings. It is perhaps unsurprising that no third party disclosure application was made: an application against entities headquartered in the USA and South Korea for highly commercially sensitive information (on factual issues such as price setting, bill of goods and profit margins) would no doubt have been challenging. Now, following the trial, Which? has now had to accept publicly that "Qualcomm’s licensing and chipset practices did not infringe competition laws, did not result in inflated royalties, and did not lead to an increase in prices consumers paid for their mobile phones”. It has to be questioned whether this was already a foreseeable outcome at the time of the certification proceedings. 

As with all settlements and withdrawals of collective actions, the agreement will need the approval of the Tribunal. This process may reveal more about the terms on which Which? agreed to withdraw the case, including the treatment of the costs of the proceedings.