Excellent question. As a lawyer, I can give you the legal answer, but I can't give you the technological answer. United States patent protection is 20 years from the date of filing. A search of the United States Patent Office database (available on-line at uspto.gov) using as the search terms Qualcomm as assignee, and CDMA as any term, indicates that Qualcomm's first application for a patent for CDMA may have been 10/17/86, so it would expire on 10/17/06. I say "may have been" because I don't understand the science well enough, I just know that the database says that's the first time for that search.
I used Qualcomm as assignee because a corporation can't be granted a patent, only an individual can, and then the patent is assigned to the corporation, so that's Qualcomm's patent. But there are earlier CDMA patents, and there are hundreds of patents on CDMA technology that are not assigned to Qualcomm. As to what technology belongs to Qualcomm, and what belongs to others, I have no idea, and will leave that to the engineers.
Patents for related techology, so-called "submerged patents", are supposed to relate back to the date of the filing of the original application. |
