The actions of the U S Pagtent office announced on Monday by IDC confirms this very bold and important claim: You can't do TDMA or GSM without using InterDigital's patents
Hi Bill, that's a pretty exciting piece you have written. It even got my heart beating a little faster. But your claim that IDC will receive royalties on every TDMA or GSM because the recent Patent Office announcement confirmed this goes too far. The U.S. Patent office doesn't make such broad judgements as you have stated above nor do they judge a patents value. All they do is confirm whether the patent is a valid patent as written, not whether any (or every)TDMA and GSM device infringes upon the patent, that's a job that's left for patent courts. It will be interesting to see if the equipment makers start signing licenses rapidly, or if they will wait for IDC to file lawsuits and take their chances in court.
While I'm at it, I wonder what your take is on the information recently disclosed in Neopoints IPO SEC filings. It basically indicates that the CDMA patents that were licensed to Qualcomm in 1994 are not limited to narrowband CDMA technology as was previously thought. The filings indicate the patents can continued to be used for wideband CDMA with up to 10MHz of spreading but the widest 3G proposal I have seen is for 5MHz width. Is it your understanding that there are other limitations on this license that preclude the royalty free use and sublicensing by Qualcomm of IDC's pioneer CDMA patents for advanced wireless systems?
It seems previous IDC management may have made a critical error when they licensed those patents for such a small sum? Wouldn't this situation create a built-in cost advantage allowing Qualcomm to deploy a GSM compatible version of CDMA2000 without all royalties that are sure to be included in the price of WCDMA equipment, handsets, basestations, and test equipment? I don't know the answer but it certainly seems like a distinct possibility.
Additionally, what about the mind-boggling potential market in China? While they are predominately GSM now, most areas have no coverage. If CDMA operators can find adequate funding, 2G CDMA could proliferate in a few years and be adapted to one of Qualcomms preferred 3G standards at low cost using a technology that IDC may not have any claim on.
Again, I don't have the answer, I'm sure no one does yet but I am interested in your opinion of all this.
Other sincere opinions welcome.
Bux |
