Whether QUALCOMM did or didn't declare their patents for the JVT jamboree, the standard pricing for QUALCOMM is about 5.5% [give or take a bit depending on what's being swapped], whether one patent is used, or the whole bundle [bundling being a good thing though the word can send anti-monopolists all a-twitter].
Ipso facto, at 5.5%, QUALCOMM was going to be FRANDly. Look at the price Broadcom wants and is going to get from Verizon for one poxy little obvious patent. Look how much they demand from QUALCOMM for the same plops. That is not FRANDly. It's malicious. But of course, that gets a pass from Judge Rudi Brewster and any other judges looking at equity and other legal jargon.
QUALCOMM didn't bother enforcing any patents in regard to the standard until Broadcom turned into a BIG trouble maker.
There was a huge amount of paperwork [albeit electronic probably] involved in the JVT jamborees.
It's a bit dopey of the standards group to blithely go ahead creating a standard without checking that the patents they use are being FRANDlied by those who know the standard is being developed and ALSO by those who are nothing whatsoever with the standard but whose patents might be part of the standard.
If QUALCOMM simply never attended any standards meetings, they could avoid "disclosing" their patents, so nobody would know what they have. Then, when the standard is announced, they could announce the royalties they require, or deny use of their patents altogether.
No doubt Judge Rudi Webster would find something wrong with that approach too.
But I am of course kidding. It is impossible to "conceal" a patent these days, or those days [Y2K onward or before]. "Disclosure" is just a formality derived from the 19th and earlier 20th century when piles of paper were the norm.
My "invention" of variable pricing for cyberphones, with a display on the handset, turned out to NOT be original. Although I hadn't had years of training, I was able in a few minutes to find the 1993 patent Motorola had for more or less exactly the same thing. It is of course so obvious that it is absurd that it be patented, but it is.
Motorola's attempt to conceal it and failure to disclose it at our standards meeting did not stop us finding it, even though we are rank amateurs.
Maybe a challenge would find it is just another plop, being used to corner a market to the disadvantage of consumers and to prevent competitors doing the same. Which is of course the opposite of the intention of the patent system, which is to encourage innovation and competition with the old by the invention of the new.
Mqurice |
