Hi Dave, to some extent they do, but it varies case by case. When designing products for consumer applications, even if a company has a patent on say, the method of adaptive equalization, unless it provides some clear advantage over everyone else's product, the patent really doesn't do much for the company. All the products for a given application (offered by all competing companies) have to perform a minimum set of functions, to a minimum standard; if that is achievable using a more mundane approach, the patent doesn't buy much. If you're interested in Broadcom's patents (not including pending, of course), go here:
patents.ibm.com
This is IBM's patent search engine. Enter "broadcom" in the search field. If you had a particular instance in mind for your question, I'll try to answer it, but remember, it will only be an opinion. The business strategy behind a patent is often more important than the patent itself, and all I could do is guess at that.
dh |
