There’s more bad news for Qualcomm. The wireless chip maker again lost a federal court appeal, with the judge upholding last month’s decision that Qualcomm is in contempt of an injunction forcing it to stop infringing on rival company Broadcom’s patents.

Any overlapping patents belonging to Qualcomm are not enforceable because of inappropriate disclosure methods, the court found – according to a Broadcom statement today.

"Qualcomm's standards abuse in this case is just the tip of the iceberg," said David Rosmann, Broadcom's vice president, Intellectual Property Litigation. "We believe Qualcomm has violated the rules of the cellular standards bodies as well, a fact we are determined to bring to light in our other pending cases."

Qualcomm officials were unavailable for comment this morning.