RE: QCOM
Eric,
Thanks for your comments on the QCOM post. I just found another interesting QCOM post from Fool GG board that really worth reading:
Author: Callisto
Subject: History Lesson For QCOM
This is my first post on this board. Sorry if this does not completely fit into this board but with all the talk about QCOM I felt it was warranted.
If market studies show that the public is ready for 3G, then SUE Nokia and NTT DoCoMo; do it right this second.
History shows what Nokia and the GSMers are doing. The crook Edison stealing AC from Telsa/Wstinghouse is a similar situation and Sarnoff/RCA stealing television from Farnsworth and later color television from CBS is an exact exercise in what Nokia is trying to do to Qualcomm.
faahrley_h_qualcomm on “Qualcomm's Rocket To The Stars” Yahoo! Club board shared a few weeks ago the history of how Edison bribed government officials to outlaw certain frequencies, conspired with bankers to financially harm Westinghouse and butchered (electrified in public) dogs and cats to scare the public away from AC in efforts to bring Telsa and Westinghouse down because of their control over AC, only to then embrace and champion AC once he succeeded and got his hands on the patents. This seems similar to Nokia efforts but the RCA analogy is almost a perfect fit.
The September/Ocotober 2000 Technology Review has a good article titled “Who Really Invented Television.” It tells the story of how Farnsworth invented television based on horizontal line positioning of electrons that he visualized at age 14. With seed money he built a transmitter and television in the late 1920's and publicly demonstrated it a few years later. Sarnoff of RCA offered $100,000 for Farnsworth patents and offered him a job. Farnsworth refused. Sarnoff then gave a huge research budget and hired top engineers with the intent to backwards engineer Farnsworth television. He brought suit against Farnsworth only to bankrupt (his attorneys felt that he would not win.) He bribed and threatened any companies that licensed Farnsworth technology, causing them to break agreements with Farnsworth, leaving Farnsworth with no one to commercially deploy his television. After many years RCA finally built a working television system (just like Nokia is trying to build around Qualcomm's patents and slow up deployment of 3G until it can) demonstrating it at the World's Fair. Even though Farnsworth had publicly demonstrated television many years earlier and Germany had broadcast Olympic games years before with Farnsworth's technology, the press dubbed RCA the FIRST (like the press calling WCDMA European and Japanese technology and competitor to CDMA.)
Farnsworth heirs recall that Farnsworth and his attorneys were certain it would have been any easy case to win against Sarnoff and RCA, at that point but Farnsworth did not initiated a suit in hopes of getting a license from RCA (I think this may be the foolhardy reason that Qualcomm is not bring a lawsuit against Nokia now.) Farnsworth did get a license a few years later but just a one time $1 million and with his growing legal and development bills he was still bankrupt even with that.
After it deceitful win, RCA conveniently kept television growth down (market of only about 6,000 sets) until right when Farnsworth patents expired (in case he did later have a a legal win – there would be a smaller market to base damages.) Shortly after expiration, RCA fully promoted television and had the market in tens of millions of sets in a few years (almost 1,000,000% growth – how convenient.)
Sarnoff did not stop there. After controlling radio and first generation television, Sarnoff went after CBS who had the first color television system. Sarnoff/RCA bribed and persuaded the government to block CBS color television system deployment because it would kill the black-and-white television industry. This bought Sarnoff time to develop his own color system. And boy did he. He made it with a good RCA-biased twist. It would only be backwards compatible to RCA black-and-white television. Any other black-and-white sets would need a $100 RCA adapter to decode the signal. (any similarity between WCDMA backwards compatibility with GSM???????????)
The article then leaves one with a lesson and to me, Qualcomm with advice: “Unless it is somehow taken away by force, what the monopolist has on his side is time.” This, to me, is the whole of Nokia's and NTT DoCoMo's strategy, buy time in the chance you can work around Qualcomm.
Qualcomm needs to sue both now to stop their efforts. Do not be a nerd like Farnsworth and just let them walk over you in the feeble chance they will license from you. Also, when the suit is filed, Qualcomm should publicly state that it will NEVER license either Nokia or NTT DoCoMo after the suit is won. |
