By Erin Geiger Smith

Feb 4 (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc has been awarded more than $12.4 million in attorneys' fees from a company whose claims of patent infringement and stolen trade secrets were thrown out.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia of San Diego said Gabriel Technologies Corp, which owns a portfolio of patents, must pay nearly all attorneys' fees from September 2008 until September 2012 that Qualcomm incurred in the case.

Cooley represented Qualcomm in the lawsuit, which was dismissed last August.

Gabriel's claims were entirely baseless and it could not have expected to succeed on any of them, the judge said in a written order on Friday.

"Several emails between Gabriel employees and former employees ... suggest that plaintiffs knew they lacked the requisite evidence and opted to pursue their claims nonetheless," Battaglia wrote.

Gabriel Technologies sued Qualcomm, the world's leading supplier of chips for cellphones, in October 2008 over patents related to global positioning system tracking devices.

The court initially dismissed many of Gabriel's claims in September 2009 but allowed the company to file an amended complaint, according to Friday's order. After the court found in favor of Qualcomm on all the remaining claims in October, Qualcomm requested its attorneys' fees, the order said.

A man who answered the phone at Gabriel Technologies in San Francisco on Monday declined to comment. He would not identify himself.

Qualcomm senior vice president Alex Rogers said in a statement that the San Diego-based company is pleased with the court's decision.

In its fee petition, Qualcomm also asked that Gabriel's local counsel, Wang Hartman Gibbs & Cauley, be forced to contribute to any fee award. The court ordered Wang Hartman to pay about $64,000, the amount it billed Gabriel in the case.

That amount "should deter local counsel from filing documents without performing a reasonable inquiry under the circumstances," the judge said.

Wang Hartman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Qualcomm had also requested attorneys' fees from Hughes Hubbard & Reed, which served as lead counsel for Gabriel in the lawsuit, but that request was withdrawn last month. Friday's order said Qualcomm and Hughes Hubbard settled the dispute for an undisclosed amount.

Hughes Hubbard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In court papers filed in December, the law firm said it had taken the case only after extensive due diligence and that Qualcomm prevailed only after "over four years of hotly contested litigation."

The case is Gabriel Technologies Corp v. Qualcomm Inc, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, No. 08-1992.

For Gabriel Technologies: Ronald Abramson of Hughes Hubbard & Reed.

For Qualcomm: Jeffrey Karr of Cooley.

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