According to a statement from Broadcom, the appeals court found that "Qualcomm violated its duty to disclose its patents to a standards body and that, as a result, the patents are unenforceable against products practicing the standard at issue".

The firm went on to state that in its ruling, the appeals court agreed with a district court decision "that Qualcomm intentionally organized a plan to shield its patents from consideration by the JVT, intending to later obtain royalties from H.264-compliant products".

The two firms have been involved in various skirmishes over patents for several years, and in September 2008, in a separate case, an appeals court ruled in Qualcomm's favour, agreeing that seven Qualcomm chips used in mobile phones did not infringe a power-saving patent.

Qualcomm announced, however, that the news was not all bad on Monday, as it had seen progress in another ongoing patent dispute, this time with chip packaging technology license holder, Tessera Technologies.

Qualcomm revealed on Monday that an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) of the US International Trade Commission had made an initial determination that Qualcomm's chip packages did not infringe two patents owned by Tessera, and found that the patents were valid.

“Qualcomm has maintained from the outset of the case that our chip packages do not infringe Tessera's patents and we are pleased that the ALJ has agreed with our position,” explained Alex Rogers, senior vice president and legal counsel at Qualcomm.