Winston, re: Qualcomm and IDCC royalties
You posted: "Bill: QCOM has stated that it would receive royalties for WCDMA. However, unlike cdma2000, whose IPR QCOM appears to own entirely, WCDMA is the sum of the efforts of many contributors, IDCC being one of them. The IPR for WCDMA is therefore owned by many parties. Wouldn't any royalty paid to licence WCDMA be divided up among the respective IPR owners?"
Yes, that is my understanding.
"Assuming this to be true, wouldn't QCOM be entitled to only a portion of the royalty paid per phone/chip (the other portions paid out to the other IPR holders) as opposed to the entire sum, which it would otherwise receive if the phone/chip were using cdma2000?"
Yes, that is my understanding. Qcom is trying to insist, however, that it will not abide by this new way of sharing the royalty pot. Qcom wants a full 5% or so royalty for its IPR, no matter how little is required by any particular manufacturer. That's added motivation to Nokia and others to completely bypass Qcom in W-CDMA (which Qcom says is impossible and Nokia says it can do - with IDCC"s help, I'm sure.)
"Furthermore, if QCOM wanted to manufacture ASICs using WCDMA, wouldn't it then have to pay royalties to the other owners of the IPR? Might this situation not result in a significant offset against any royalties QCOM would receive for WCDMA?"
Yes, I agree. Again, QCOM may continue to insist it will take its marbles and go home if it doesn't get at least 5%. But its bad boy tactics have continued to infuriate the rest of the industry - motivating them to work day in and day to cut QCOM out of the pie.
Alto I own shares in both Qcom and IDCC, I feel much, much better about IDCC than Qcom these days.
Bill |
