Apple CEO uses sofa analogy to explain Qualcomm lawsuit

“They were insisting on charging royalties for technologies that they had nothing to do with,” the Apple CEO said. “We were in a situation where the more we innovated with unique features like Touch ID… the more money Qualcomm would collect for no reason and the more expensive it would be therefore for us to innovate.”

Cook said the move was the same as, “buying a sofa and you charge somebody a different price depending on the price of the house it goes into.”

In its suit, Apple claims that Qualcomm went so far as it attempt to extort the iPhone maker into changing statements it made about the chip supplier to the Korea Fair Trade Commission in exchange for $1 billion it owes to Apple.

“As a part of their increasingly radical steps they were taking to try to hold up that model, they withheld $1 billion in payments,” Cook explained.

“I don’t like litigation and so if there’s another way then that would be great,” the Apple CEO said. “But at this point I don’t see it. I fully expect at this point in time that it will take some time. In the end I think common sense will prevail and the courts will see it for what it is.”

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