Man, is this year of the lawsuit or are they simply receiving more press this time around? “And in this corner we have Qualcomm and in the other, we have Broadcom!”

Qualcomm, facing an antitrust lawsuit and two patent infringement lawsuits from Broadcom, filed its own patent suit Monday against Broadcom.

Qualcomm, a cell-phone chip maker, accuses Broadcom of using technology covered by seven of its patents without permission. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. court in San Diego, accuses Broadcom of infringing six of Qualcomm’s patents related to integrated circuits for use in GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phones and infringing a seventh patent related to semiconductor chips for Wi-Fi devices.

In May, Broadcom filed two lawsuits against Qualcomm, accusing it of infringing 10 patents. Broadcom also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm this month, accusing Qualcomm of engaging in unfair licensing practices for its CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology, resulting in higher priced cell phones in the U.S. Broadcom said it was filing the suit to prevent the same situation occurring in the developing 3G (third-generation) cell-phone market.

Many GSM wireless carriers have deployed a form of CDMA, called WCDMA (Wideband CDMA), for some 3G services related to multimedia distribution, higher data transmission rates and other improvements.

In the two May lawsuits, Broadcom focuses on a variety of technologies for multimedia mobile phones, including QChat, digital video encoding and decoding, simultaneous voice and data transmission and the use of Bluetooth. Broadcom also filed a complaint about Qualcomm with the International Trade Commission in May. [Read the rest]