Dave:
There were multiple elements to the analysis that we requested: (1) identification of the breadth of CDMA-related patents, i.e. in totality, what does the company have, (2) technical relevance of these patents, i.e. which patents appear to be essential to the working IS-95 standard, (3) to what extent does the proposed W-CDMA standard appear to involve IPR directly related to the IS-95 standard, (4) to what extent does the proposed W-CDMA standard appear to involve other QCOM IPR and (5) to the extent that points three and four overlap with QCOM IPR, how does this line up against ERICY's U.S. patent portfolio.
Central to the thought process was the observation that almost sixty companies, including reasonably powerful outfits such as Lucent, Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, have found it necessary to license QC's IPR for IS-95 related applications. If QC's IPR were limited, ephemeral, easily circumvented et cetera, we presume that there would be at least a few rogue players out there somewhere trying to deliver IS-95 applications without paying Qualcomm. Observing that there are none, the analysis turned to understanding the points of differentiation between IS-95 and W-CDMA. While there seem to be some significant differences, the proposed W-CDMA standard appears to employ very similar, if not identical, approaches to power control, the rake receiver and soft handoff (among other items).
Without publishing the brief, in short, our counsel concluded that while there are some basic differences between IS-95 and W-CDMA, most of the major alternative design elements are in areas peripheral to Qualcomm's core IPR. While our counsel was loath speculate on another's motives, it seems reasonable to conclude that some of the elements of W-CDMA were specifically designed to create bilateral IPR, i.e. the need from Qualcomm to cross license with ERICY in order to build W-CDMA related products. Absent these modifications, W-CDMA is profoundly similar to IS-95.
In summary, W-CDMA appears in many respects to be a tweaked flavor of IS-95 with some very specific incompatibilities and differences. These differences appears to be tactical changes in the standard rather than anything approaching a fundamental alteration of the air interface concept and implementation. Seen from this vantage, and in light of the broad licensing of QCOM's IPR for IS-95, our counsel's conclusion seems not only reasonable, but rather obvious.
Beyond the above, the ongoing work relates to a similar review of European patents and a brief on patent protection reciprocity. I hope this is helpful.
Gregg |
