BRUSSELS, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Monday launched an antitrust investigation into U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm for suspected exploitative practices of its patent rights.

    The European Union's antitrust watchdog said the investigation was opened after leading mobile phone and chipset makers, including Ericsson, Nokia, NEC and Panasonic, lodged complaints.

    Qualcomm, the world's second-largest chipmaker for cell phones, was allegedly imposing unfair, unreasonable and discriminatory terms and conditions when licensing its intellectual property rights in the WCDMA standards for mobile telephone, which may breach EU competition rules.

    The WCDMA standard forms part of the 3G (third generation) standard for European mobile phone technology (also referred to as "UMTS").

    In a context of standardization, essential patent holders should not be able to exploit the extra power they have gained as a result of having technology based on their patent incorporated in the standard, according to the so-called Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) commitments, the commission said.

    The complaints also alleged that Qualcomm's exploitative practices could lead to final consumers paying higher handset prices, a slower development of the 3G standard and negative effect on the standard setting process more generally as well as the adoption of the future 4G standard.

    However, the commission said it has no conclusive proof of an infringement, and signified an in-depth investigation of the case was conducted as a matter of priority.

    Jonathan Todd, EU spokesman for competition, told reporters it usually takes years to complete an antitrust case, depending on a number of factors, such as the complexity of each case.