Qualcomm Wins Dismissal of Wireless Antitrust Suit
August 31, 2012
On August 31, 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi granted Cravath’s motion to dismiss an antitrust suit in which the plaintiff, Cellular South, a regional cellular operator, accused our client, Qualcomm, and other defendants of conspiring to delay the development of Cellular South’s 4G LTE cellular network. Cellular South claimed that Qualcomm, AT&T and Motorola conspired to manipulate 3GPP, a standard-setting organization, in order to advance AT&T’s 4G LTE network at the expense of Cellular South’s. In a claim that raised a potential threat to standards-setting processes generally, Cellular South claimed that the defendants’ support of a technical proposal within 3GPP that favored AT&T “had to” be the result of an unlawful agreement in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Judge Aycock of the Mississippi federal court held that this and other allegations were insufficient under the standard set out in the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly.
The Cravath team included partners Roger G. Brooks and Yonatan Even, practice area attorney Thomas C. Viles and associates Margaret T. Segall, Veena Viswanatha, Carrie R. Bierman, Pierre N. Gemson, John D. Biancamano and Brittany L. Sukiennik. Summer associates Cody Herche and John Karin also worked on this matter.
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J.S.D., 2009, Columbia Law School
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LL.M., 2004, Columbia Law SchoolJames Kent Scholar
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LL.B., 1999, Tel Aviv Universitymagna cum laude
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J.D., 2008, Harvard Law Schoolcum laude
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A.B., 2003, Harvard Collegemagna cum laude
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