| | | "Why so much hatred?" Is it hatred or greed, or both?
Qualcomm has remained the leader in active (unexpired) patents, particularly when it comes to efficient use of spectrum, including sub 6G. Competitors almost always try to fine some way to reduce royalty payments. A never ending lawsuit (e.g., ParkerVision v. Qualcomm) is one method, the by-product of which is a loss of investor confidence in the defendant.
This has been going on for a long time. MaCom [sp?], which later became Interdigital, claimed ownership of certain early patents obtained when QCOM leaders ran a company known as Linkabit. QCOM settled by cross licensing some of its broadband patents. Then Ericsson claimed that CDMA patents were invalid because they didn't meet criteria defining new and novel. A Markman hearing in a Texas federal court convinced Ericsson to settle before things got worse. In short, they didn't have a winnable case. Then Nokia tried a similar stunt, which ended by their allowing Qualcomm cross licensing access to key GSM patents, which Qualcomm needed in order to create reference designs that were compatible with GSM and CDMA. Then an FTC action, inspired in part by Apple, accused QCOM of anticompetitive business practices – scuttled by a federal court of appeals in California. Then an ARM lawsuit claiming Qualcomm illegally used a ARM patents when it acquired Nuvia, whose key personnel had earlier helped Apple with a new and faster processor design, followed by a Qualcomm action against ARM, still in pre-trial.
I missed a few other cases, but you get the point. A competitor will try most anything to increase profits, especially by finding a way to reduce the royalties they fork over with every sale of a device that practices one or more Qualcomm patents. "Greed is good," said a protagonist in a movie. Warren Buffett said it better when he proclaimed a need for "controlled greed."
Qualcomm generally has a good record of being open and honest in its patent licensing agreements. They made one major mistake of hiding video compression patents from a standards setting body, and they paid dearly for the mistake by seeing a court invalidate those patents. Luckily their former general counsel who averred that the issue was unimportant is long gone. On the other side, Qualcomm early on helped the Securities & Exchange Commission to create what were known as "full disclosure" regulations requiring a top company official to timely certify the accuracy of each financial report. At the inception of that rule, quite a few companies reported late, or readjusted their reports to reflect "new" information that might change the public's view of the company.
We are now witnessing one more iteration of that scheme to somehow minimize Qualcomm's latest announcement of AI chips that could cut energy requirements in processing and use of large language models by as much as 90%.
It's all about money. And some corporate leaders and analysts are eager to add hatred to their scheming.
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