© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The Qualcomm logo during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe's second-highest court has said EU regulators should pay 785,857.54 euros ($851,634) in legal fees to Qualcomm (NASDAQ:), less than 90% of the 12 million euros requested by the American chipmaker after winning an appeal against an antitrust fine.
The Luxembourg-based General Court said the number of hours worked and hourly rates used in Qualcomm's lawsuit were “manifestly excessive.”
Qualcomm submitted its bill to the European Commission in 2022 after the General Court backed the US group's fight against a €997 million EU antitrust fine issued in 2018 and ordered the regulator to pay Qualcomm's legal costs.
The Commission, however, questioned the 12,041,755.80 euros requested by the company and stated that the amount should be 405,315 euros.
Qualcomm said its bill was based on the importance and complexity of the case and the amount of work done by a team of 19 people.
In a ruling dated February 29 posted on the court's website, the judges dismissed the US company's arguments, saying that the courts were only concerned with the total number of work hours necessary for legal proceedings, regardless of the number of lawyers involved in the case.
They said the hourly rates were not presented in relation to specific and clearly identified tasks and that the extensive amount of research and analysis and the numerous documents presented to the court were not sufficient to justify the sums claimed or that the work related to them was carried out. necessarily.
“The plaintiff's request is not sufficiently substantiated and is manifestly excessive both with regard to the amounts claimed and the number of hours and the corresponding hourly rates,” the judges said.
The court set the total fees, including expenses, for the law firm Quinn Emanuel at €754,190 and €31,667.54 for the economic consultancy Compass Lexecon/FTI.
This is case T‑235/18 DEP Qualcomm v European Commission.
(1 dollar = 0.9228 euros)
