The Motorola Patent Issue
Qualcomm has never claimed to be the "inventor of CDMA", this comment from Ericsson is just more PR baloney. Qualcomm claims to have perfected commercially viable mobile CDMA. Within this context, the company's IPR extends from the basic CDMA waveform through the much discussed elements of rake receivers, power control and soft-handoff; in excess of seven hundred US patents, issued or pending, corroborate this claim.
The Qualcomm patent that Motorola has been contesting broadly describes a non-terrestrial, i.e. satellite based, application of CDMA. It is a very early and very general patent which I believe Motorola is concerned with due to its announced intention to eventually migrate Iridium from TDMA to CDMA. Qualcomm's litigation counsel noted to me that while the company never likes to see a patent revoked (a) the process is not over as Qualcomm can and will appeal the decision, which in Europe, begins the evaluation process anew and (b) the patent is basically irrelevant to the W-CDMA debate. To put this in context, recall that back in 1986, when this patent was filed, Omnitrac's, which is a satellite-based two-way messaging and position service, was Qualcomm's primary business endeavor.
While Ericsson is trying to use this revocation to its PR advantage, rest assured that we would have seen something far more formal and much more damning than snide comments in Wireless Week were this patent truly germane to the debate.
Hope this helps!
Gregg |
