Public Policy
Making our voice heard
To help promote innovation and protect our business interests, we participate in the crafting of public policy by supporting certain United States political candidates and advocating for certain policy positions. We are transparent in our public policy work, and we follow all applicable laws and regulations regarding political contributions.
How we support candidates
We make legal contributions to the campaigns of federal candidates in the United States through QPAC, our political action committee. Consistent with federal law, our Company pays the administrative costs ofmaintaining QPAC, but all QPAC contributions come voluntarily from our employees. Information regarding QPAC contributions is publicly reported and available on the website of the Federal Election Commission.
At the state level, we contribute to candidates, ballot initiatives and political parties. Records of our contributions to state candidates are available at the website of the California Secretary of State. At the local level, Qualcomm has made contributions to local parties and ballot initiatives.
We adhere to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), a U.S. law prohibiting any registered lobbyist, or any organization that employs a lobbyist (such as Qualcomm), from providing certain gifts to congressional employees. HLOGA requires companies that employ lobbyists to certify semiannually that they have read the gift rules and that no gifts that were known to be in violation of the congressional gift rules have been given.
Employees may participate in political activities of their choice on an individual basis, with their own money and on their own personal time, subject to all applicable laws and Company policies.
Our policy positions
In 2011, we continued our engagement in policymaking at the international, federal, state and local levels. Here is a brief summary of some of our policy positions:
Competition policy:
As a global company, we support open and competitive markets. Today there exist more than 100 antitrust agencies with different degrees of enforcement experience, legal systems and procedural requirements.
We advocate that government competition regulators/enforcers adhere, to the maximum extent, to common principles in order to minimize legal divergence and economic distortions across borders and to promote commercial diffusion of technology and consumer welfare. We support dialogue within and between governments to enhance transparency, promote sharing of best practices in the areas of procedural fairness and rigorous economic analysis of alleged anticompetitive conduct and effects, and encourage substantive alignment on the intersection of complex legal and business issues, especially in the areas of intellectual property licensing and standards.
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Education:
We fund numerous educational programs and projects worldwide, and advocate for policies that improve education, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
A specific area of focus is the role of mobile broadband in improving educational outcomes. Qualcomm supports the U.S. Department of Education’s National Education Technology Plan and the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan, which include cloud computing and mobile devices as fundamental components of educational infrastructure. For more information about specific programs we’ve funded to promote access to mobile broadband technologies to improve education, visit our Wireless Reach site.
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Intellectual property and patent reform:
As a technology developer and enabler, we depend on strong intellectual property (IP) protections and patent systems that promote innovation and reward companies that focus on developing inventions that enable new products and services to come to market.
We support patent reforms that improve patent quality and patent office operations, including reducing pendency and backlogs of patent applications. We also advocate for standards and government funding/procurement policies that catalyze ongoing innovation and promote competition between different technologies and business and IP-licensing models.
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Mobile broadband:
As a wireless innovator, we have a significant stake in policies seeking to promote mobile broadband. Mobile phones are ubiquitous and arguably the most pervasive technology platform in history.
The majority of the world’s population will experience the Internet predominantly or exclusively over a mobile device. Yet the full potential of mobile communications technologies is not yet being realized. We’re doing our part to raise awareness and demonstrate different applications of mobile technology as a tool to promote economic inclusion and entrepreneurial development in emerging economies. Through our collaboration with organizations in our Wireless Reach projects and participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI), World Economic Forum (WEF), International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Taskforce on Broadband and other forums, we are also helping to educate the next generation of leaders in emerging regions of the transformative power of wireless technologies.
In addition, we work to educate policymakers around the world about the need to make more spectrum available, given the virtual explosion in wireless data usage that we have witnessed and anticipate continuing. In the United States, we strongly support the National Broadband Plan, which was released by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2010. The FCC’s Plan calls for substantially more spectrum for mobile broadband—500 MHz to be made newly available for mobile broadband use within the next 10 years, of which 300 MHz between 227 MHz and 3.7 GHz should be made available within five years. In addition, we advocate for legislation to provide the FCC with the authority to conduct voluntary incentive auctions, which has the potential to free up as much as 120 MHz of high-quality spectrum for mobile broadband.
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Tax:
As a multinational company, we support tax policies that allow us to compete effectively in a global economy, such as proposals that would adopt a territorial system for taxing foreign income and reduce the corporate tax rate.
We also support policies to encourage research and development (R&D), including making the U.S. R&D tax credit permanent. We have also encouraged policymakers to consider proposals, such as a repatriation incentive, that would allow U.S. multinationals to return offshore cash to the United States at a reduced tax rate to spur investment and innovation.
As a California-based company, we supported adoption of the single-sales-factor method of apportioning a business’ income to California. To further encourage companies to increase property and payroll in California and to increase corporate tax revenue in California, we have also advocated that the single-sales-factor method should be made mandatory instead of elective.
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Trade:
We support the increase of global commerce through new agreements to open markets for trade and investment. We are supportive of an ambitious, pro-growth trade policy and advocated in favor of the bilateral free-trade agreements with Colombia, Korea and Panama that were ratified in 2011.
We encourage the completion of the World Trade Organization Doha Round trade pact with ambitious and balanced results as well as other trade initiatives, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
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Workforce:
We advocate in favor of a full supply of highly educated professionals, both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, to drive innovation, fuel economic growth and create business and job opportunities in the United States.
We have advocated in favor of reforms to U.S. immigration laws that currently restrict our ability to hire and retain foreign nationals who are qualified for jobs in which there is often a shortage of qualified U.S. workers.
In addition, we offer excellent benefits to our employees and closely monitor policy proposals that affect our ability to continue to offer best-in-class health care coverage and other critical employee benefits. We support policies that encourage diversity in the workplace, including enactment of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would enact a federal ban on employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.