InterDigital does indeed do CDMA cell systems, but they specialize in fixed (i.e. WLL) systems. Qualcomm's real strength is mobile cell CDMA systems. There is some overlap, but such things as soft handoff, and power control are just not anywhere near as critical in WLL. For the actual settlement, the Qualcomm '96 10-K says:
In connection with the settlement and dismissal of the Company's patent litigation with InterDigital, the Company received, among other rights, a fully-paid, royalty free license to use and to sublicense the use of those patents claimed by InterDigital to be essential to IS-95.
And more interestingly the InterDigital '96 10-K says:
In 1994, ITC also entered into a CDMA cross-license agreement with Qualcomm Incorporated to settle litigation filed in 1993. In return for a one-time payment of $5.5 million, ITC granted to Qualcomm a fully-paid, royalty free, worldwide license to use and sublicense certain specified and existing ITC CDMA patents (including related divisional and continuation patents) to make and sell products for IS-95-type wireless applications, including, but not limited to, cellular, PCS, wireless local loop and satellite applications. Qualcomm has the right to sublicense certain of ITC's licensed CDMA patents so that Qualcomm's licensees will be free to manufacture and sell IS-95-type CDMA products without requiring any payment to ITC. Neither ITC's patents concerning cellular overlay and interference cancellation nor its current inventions are licensed to Qualcomm. Under the settlement, Qualcomm granted to InterDigital a royalty-free license to use and to sublicense the patent that Qualcomm had asserted against InterDigital and a royalty-bearing license to use certain Qualcomm CDMA patents in InterDigital's B-CDMA products, if needed. InterDigital does not believe that it will be necessary to use any of Qualcomm's royalty-bearing or non-licensed patents in its B-CDMA system. In addition, Qualcomm agreed, subject certain restrictions, to license certain CDMA patents on a royalty bearing basis to those InterDigital customers that desire to use Qualcomm's patents. The license to InterDigital does not apply to IS-95-type systems, or to satellite systems. Certain of Qualcomm's patents, relating to key IS-95 features such as soft and softer hand-off, variable rate vocoding, and orthogonal (Walsh) coding, are not licensed to InterDigital.
Emphasis mine.
Note that InterDigital is second only to Qualcomm in CDMA knowledge/hands-on-experience and they are very litigious and have obtained lots of concessions from lots of companies. Yet the best they were able to do with Qualcomm was pretty minimal. I have no doubt that they probably have some stuff that might help bypass some Qualcomm patents, but I also have no doubt that they are missing a lot of stuff as well since they don't emphasize mobile. Just FYI and MO.
Clark
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