Dave, You said: "The only way to find out if the ETSI's W-CDMA proposal/standard infringes on the Q's IP is court."
Not really, you can hire lawyers, read the patents, understand the technology, study case law, read the patent law, consider the countries involved and predict what the courts will decide.
Engineers, doctors and all of us model expected future outcomes like this all the time to predict the future. Gregg Powers says we can't predict the future, but while that is true, we can do a pretty good job of it most of the time. We have no choice. We have to predict the future and do it all day every day. Some are short term predictions such as "If I want milk I can get it at the corner store". Some are long term ones such as "If I buy Qualcomm at $51, I'll be able to retire and live happily ever after when I'm 60 years old".
So, while it is true that a court test with political and military support is the ultimate test, nearly always, people are able to predict the future with sufficient clarity that they don't need to go down that path. They negotiate a better way forward. They can predict what courts will decide and act accordingly. The lawyers of the two parties can discuss their respective predictions and see if they agree. If they don't, they can investigate further and enhance their predictive powers.
Sometimes a test is the only way to decide. The cdma2000 issue seems very robustly in favour of Qualcomm. The L M Ericsson blustering is very evidently just that. They have little negotiating strength. They can only damage their own interests by delaying agreement. They can damage others interests too, but much less than they damage their own. So they will want an early solution. They don't want a court case. Neither does Qualcomm.
Of course Qualcomm's position is biased. They own the patents! I want to be paid big, huge, mountains of royalties for the years and years and years of waiting for cdmaOne and cdma2000 to succeed. If L M Ericsson and others don't like that, they should learn to.
Just to correct another idea. Some people suggest that because Qualcomm gets royalties, they will be able to better compete in handsets and infrastructure. That is false. If the handset and infrastructure people can't make money and compete without royalty subsidy, they should be sacked and sent to work for Nokia. It is fair enough to use royalties to establish the business, the same as Omnitracs profits funded cdmaOne developments. But they must not be thought of as any kind of discount able to be offered as lure to subscribers.
That is called bludging. A bit like L M Ericsson is trying to do. In big companies it is always a risk.
Mqurice |
