How do you seperate quality from quantity when it comes to IPR. Is radio layer patents more important than layer 2 or layer 3 patents for the WCDMA standard? I don't think you can argue that either way.
Rudi Bekkers, an author of IPR issues in publications previously championed by our own Eric L, co-authored a March 2006 (pretty recent considering!) look at UTMS patent issues.
fp.tm.tue.nl
It has been referenced before and its a must re-read for me when patent issues surface. The organization behind the paper (http://www.dime-eu.org/), Dynamics of Institutions and
Markets in Europe, "is a network of excellence of social scientists in Europe, working on the economic and social consequences of increasing globalization and the rise of the knowledge economy" (which does not sound partial to QUALCOMM to me LOL) and I think in looking at Eric L.'s comments (our esteemed thread gadfly) toward Rudi Bekkers, he considers him to be a creditable and impartial source of information. Message 21361492
Interesting tidbits from article include that fact that most of the patents accepted by 3GPP from Qualcomm(and IDCC) were awarded before the WCDMA standard was finalized vs Nokia and Erickson which raced to complete patents once the standard direction was cast. see tables 2 and 3 pages 16 and 17
"In addition to the all patents, Figure 2 shows separate lines for the priority date for the patents held by Nokia and Ericsson. Both firms have rather identical patterns: there is a clear peak in patenting activity in the years 1998 and 1999, exactly the period in which the basic technology choice was made. Both firms were intensively involved designing their (successful) proposal for that selection, and later in drafting the actual details of the standard within
the relevant ETSI Technical Committees. Interestingly enough, Qualcomm and Interdigital, the two other large IPR holders, show rather different timing patterns (see Figure 3). For Qualcomm, 199 of its 226 claimed essential patents were applied for in 1996 or earlier. That is years before the basic technology for UMTS was selected (in 1999). Although there is usually some delay between the priority date
and the moment other parties can see the claims, there is little doubt that at the UMTS technology selection it was clear that Qualcomm owned an extensive portfolio of relevant patents."
"Also, Qualcomm was not involved in any of the proposals to ETSI (focusing on its competing cdma2000 technology instead) and was relatively absent when the standard was further set and drafted. For the firm Interdigital, we also see that many patents were applied for long be fore the 1999 technology choice, though this company also shows more patenting activities in 2000 and 2001."
Using prexisting "art" to form much of the standard to me is compelling. Having in corporated while not even being a relevant part of the discussion makes it a slam dunk.
"Another measure of strategic patenting would be if a firm’s patenting is primarily focused at a particular tandardization effort (here UMTS) rather than more broadly on mobile telephony or telecommunications. To consider this, we have compared their overall patent ownership in relevant mobile telecommunications categories with the UMTS essential patents that firm owns."
Highest scores were IDCC, Asustech (who?) and QUALCOMM (pp 18-19)
"firms may seek to deter entry or protect their ability to collect royalties through patent thickets through a web of overlapping patents on a single category of invention (Shapiro, 2001). One indicator of thicketing would be the use of an identical title for two patents; for this, we could conclude the patents are either closely related or even an
identical invention. Column (6) in Table 6 shows the fraction of patent claims for which either the patent title or the title used for the notice are identical to that of other patents claimed by the same firms. Again, we observe differences between firms: for Qualcomm, Philips and Samsung the fraction is higher than 20%, whereas the average lies at 11%."
Regarding citing patents in the literature as a measure of patent validity, "Motorola and Qualcomm, by any measurement,
have the highest scores. The average number of cites to their patents are 1.9 and 1.5 respective, far above the overall average of 0.66 cites per patent. The most valuable single
patents seem to belong to Qualcomm; their patent EP0536334 receives no less than 33 cites. 21 No other firm scores higher than 12 incoming cites for a single patent. Following Trajtenberg (1990), we have calculated a proxy for patent value, that established the value of a single patent to be one plus the number of cites it receives (i.e. the aforementioned Qualcomm patent would receive a value of 1 + 33 = 34). If we would replace our ranking by the total number of patents by the newly calculated value proxy, the most significant change is that Qualcomm would move from the third to the first position, and Nokia vice versa. Thus by these measures, Qualcomm seems to hold the most valuable patents."
Also shown is that many companies have many patents. "With UMTS, also six years after the first stable specification, we find at least 73 essential patent holders and a total of at least 1,227 essential patents, an eightfold increase.
Lots more there."
Here Nokia and Erickson lead the way with the number of patents awarded.
But the analysis given by this European organization over a standard where Qualcomm came late to the game shows ETSI incorporating Qualcomm engineering early, often and in places that mattered IMO.
BTW.."Some individuals have an impressive record as inventors in patents, such as Donald Schilling of InterDigital (225 EPO patents) and Klein Gilhousen (312) and Paul Jacobs (220) of Qualcomm.
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