Eric, Money Magazine was doing well until they got to here: <Qualcomm faces a troubling Catch-22. If it doesn't move to protect its patent claims, it will lose a lot of revenue. But if it enforces its patents aggressively (as it has), it may alienate potential customers and drive them to seek alternate technologies, as some already are doing. And no matter how aggressively Qualcomm fights, it can't prevent courts from ruling against it >
Why on earth does enforcing patents alienate customers? That is simply insane. Everyone knows that patents mean you pay the developer for their creation. I don't come over all angry at the CD store because the singer gets royalties. If the overall price is too expensive I might! But nobody has any technology as cheap or good as QUALCOMM's CDMA. They have undercharged on royalties as I have laboriously explained and won't do again just now [as shown by the huge 3G auction prices in Europe].
Also, yes, it's true that QUALCOMM can't stop courts ruling against them. Neither can we avoid nuclear war, incoming comets, virulent plagues on humanity wiping out a billion subscribers. Yes, the USA military could nuke all the QUALCOMM buildings tomorrow and bring anti-trust suits against the rest.
Oh heck, I'd better sell then.
Money Magazine obviously doesn't have a clue what the case was about in Korea. At the time, it seemed to me that Q! would have to pay up, but it was claimed [by Gregg Powers I believe] that the actual frequencies were defined in the agreement. I now doubt that was true. I bet it was confusion between the words cellular and PCS, though I don't have evidence of that.
But that case does NOT mean that courts might find against Q! It is far more likely that George W Bush will bring a dirty great anti-trust suit against the "major-league assholes" [to quote George W] in San Diego who helped fund Algorithm in his litigation to wrest the Presidency from Bush's rightful clutches. Let's hope our man on the board, Brent Scowcroft, buddy of George senior, can tame the savage beast lurking in the anti-trust lair in Washington. c-span.org
It looks as though he is off to a good start! The body language looks good. Here is a discussion with Bush senior and Brent ... booknotes.org
Isn't It great! So easy to find stuff and know a lot despite not knowing anything.
So, we can conclude, ladies and gentlemen, that Money Magazine, like most media, doesn't have a clue what's going on other that reporting a few cliches.
Mqurice |
