 Shares of Qualcomm (QCOM) might have dropped along with the broader market in this week's bloodbath, but the decline was counterbalanced by some good news.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with Qualcomm when denying the FTC's (Federal Trade Commission) request for an en banc hearing.The FTC filed its petition on Sep 25 following the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court's ruling to reverse a lower-court decision against Qualcomm.Qualcomm had originally lost an antitrust case against the FTC after it accused the chipmaker of anticompetitive patent licensing in an attempt to tighten its grip on the smartphone modem chip market. But in August, a three-judge panel overturned the ruling, saying the FTC hadn't established QCOM's behavior skewed the market in its favor. Should Qualcomm have lost it would have needed to renegotiate its patent licenses, which would have cut into its licensing revenue.For Deutsche bank analyst Ross Seymore, the decision removes the final overhang from a case which began all the way back in January 2017. The decision, says Seymore, allows investors to "remain focused on the company's strong positioning within 5G and the sell through of 5G devices."Seymore further added, "We note that QCOM has already signed and implemented new multi-year license agreements with every major handset OEM including Apple, Samsung, and Huawei (100 agreements covering 5G), with [the] decision likely bolstering Qualcomm in its current and future license negotiations. For QCOM's QCT busines
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