Judge James Selna of the US District Court for the Central District of California ruled on August 28 that Qualcomm had violated the injunction order by continuing to “use and support” infringing WCDMA chips and had also failed to pay royalties to Broadcom on certain infringing products. The judge ordered Qualcomm to pay Broadcom its gross profits from those products, as well as attorneys’ fees associated with the contempt action.

Broadcom originally filed the case in May 2005 and in May 2007 a jury decided that Qualcomm had infringed the three patents and awarded Broadcom $19.64 million in damages. In January, a US magistrate judge also ordered Qualcomm to pay $8.5 million for withholding evidence relevant to the case.

According to a Qualcomm press release, the judge did not find in favour of Broadcom on most of the other issues raised by Broadcom’s latest suit, and allowed Qualcomm to continue to manufacture and sell its design-around WCDMA chips. Qualcomm said that it had interpreted the injunction order to mean that it must pay royalties on WCDMA products made and sold between the date of the original verdict and the date the injunction was issued, rather than to cease service and support altogether. The contempt ruling will require Broadcom to return such royalty payments, and Qualcomm employees must stop using phones containing the infringing chips.

“While Qualcomm appreciates that the Court found in favour of Qualcomm on most issues, it will appeal those issues on which the Court has ruled against it,” said the company in a statement.

According to Broadcom, the court is also still considering whether Qualcomm should be found in contempt of the order for offering to sell the infringing WCDMA chips after the date of the injunction.

“Over the past two years, Qualcomm has been found to have infringed four Broadcom patents , abused the standards-setting process, and committed gross discovery misconduct, and now has been held in contempt of a court-ordered injunction,” said David Rosmann, vice president of intellectual property litigation for Broadcom, in a statement.

In a separate proceeding at the US International Trade Commission (ITC), an administrative law judge ruled that certain SiRF Technology Holdings’ chips related to global positioning system technology be barred from importation into the US, as they infringe six of Broadcom’s patents. The ITC judge determined that the chips violated Broadcom’s patents early last month.

SiRF said that it has implemented alternatives to the initial ruling so that customers can continue shipping products to the US. SiRF and the ITC staff have appealed the ruling to the ITC and asked for review of the judge’s decision on the infringement issue. SiRF founder, Kanwar Chadha, said in a statement: “There is no ban on shipment of SiRF’s or our customers’ products. In fact, the ITC will not even make any final determination until December after they have finished their investigation including reviewing the ITC Staff’s appeal and our appeal.”