The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week granted a stay pending appeal on the ITC's ban on importing Qualcomm's chips into the U.S. due to a violation of a Broadcom patent - which is, of course, very good news for Qualcomm.

It all comes down to whether or not the ITC can block third parties using Qualcomm chips, or just the Qualcomm products themselves. The finding is that companies like LG, Samsung, Motorola, etc., shouldn't be affected by the ban. Of course, Qualcomm doesn't import its own chips outside of third party products anyway, so that limitation doesn't really matter so much, even if Broadcom insists that it does.

"We are pleased that the Court of appeals recognized the undeserved harm to parties who were not named in the lawsuit, and that our customers will continue to be able to introduce new products into the U.S. marketplace during the appeals process," says Qualcomm legal counsel Alex H. Rogers.

More here from InformationWeek ... more here from The Register ... more here from InfoWorld ... and the press release is here.