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To: Ilaine who wrote (3785)2/8/2000 12:35:00 PM
From: Wayne  Respond to of 5195
 
Agreed, there are extremes in all directions and most detract.

Regarding the suit, I've had several cases in court, not patent related, and can atest that cases are sometimes carried forward even if the result is clear. In todays environment, for example, a litigant with a position in the market might earn enough to pay their anticipated costs. That would justify as much delay as possible. It can also be a negotiating posture when one party has far more resources than the other. Just a couple of examples of factors which can affect the approach to a legal proceeding. I don't suggest that these are factors here, but we can't assume that delay is not a valid strategy.



To: Ilaine who wrote (3785)2/8/2000 6:27:00 PM
From: Gus  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 5195
 
Cobalt Blue,

Let me add that the record is clear that much of "the flaming and posturing" has been provoked by Qualcommers who can not tolerate the notion that CMDA rests on the foundation of spread spectrum technology that has been around since the 1940s and 1950s -- public domain foundations, in other words -- because then that would mean that there are alternative paths that cast serious doubts about QCOM's ability to impose its royalty regime on the rest of the industry while it only has 10% of the global market.

It doesn't help that the counterintuitive nature of CDMA technology lends it tremendous intellectual appeal but that kind of appeal really doesn't rise much beyond the level of pretentions unless one is willing to look at the unassailable facts about IDC's BCDMA technology and why it represents one significant alternative path to 3g.

That is why an effort is being made here to un-complicate the history of CDMA by distinguishing between spread spectrum, QCOM's narrowband CDMA and IDC's broadband CDMA.

This is more than just a theoretical exercise because Nokia is clearly using IDC's broadband CDMA building blocks to complement its own R&D and product development. One thing about Nokia: it can lose the infrastructure sale, but it can still make money out of the initial handset sale or the handset upgrade sale. One estimate out there is that Nokia will get 40% of the early 3g WCDMA market in Western Europe and Japan.

All one has to do is look at the list of IDC patents dating back to 1973 and IDC's SEC filings to see the evolution and reduction to practice -- Ultraphone -- of IDC's TDMA patents.

Similarly, all one has to do is look at the sterling credentials of Donald L. Schilling and his patents at SCS and IDC to see the evolution and reduction to practice -- Truelink -- of IDC's broadband CDMA patents. Truelink, by the way, is the core of the Samsung/IDC fixed wireless project in the Guandong province of China.

Instead of throwing a hissy fit, a Qualcommer might benefit from the simple exercise of drilling down the references of the 5 patents that were the subject of a 1994 cross-licensing agreement between Qualcomm and IDC that resulted in QCOM paying $5.5 million to IDC for IS-95 use ONLY while IDC, which acquired rights to certain QCOM patents in that same agreement, continues to flatly declare in its SEC filings that it doesn't need to use QCOM patents to implement broadband CDMA.

Drilling down and cross-referencing those patents will yield...

a) a more realistic understanding of the considerable spread spectrum work done by the likes of defense contractors like Texas Instruments (1977), ITT, Signatron, Harris, and E-Systems;

b) how Donald Schilling's work was heavily influenced by a long line of seminal spread spectrum efforts and later on, and only tangentially IMO, by QCOM's own narrowband CDMA work starting in 1989; and most importantly,

c) a clear record of how IDC has been working on integrating fixed and mobile broadband CDMA into fixed and mobile TDMA systems since the early 90s. This is an important distinction to make since TDMA and GSM (a variant of TDMA) constitute 85% of the global market today and thus the transition from 2g to 3g WCDMA will require basestations and handsets that incorporate both technologies.

Again the point that needs to be made is this: QCOM's 2g CDMAOne and 3g CDMA2000 represent one viable path to wireless voice and data. IDC's 2g TDMA and 3g WCDMA represent another viable path.

Nokia and IDC have been reducing this to practice on a daily basis in various WCDMA trials around the world and that remains an underappreciated fact. At the end of the day, it is the manufacturers and carriers who decide on the most cost-effective upgrade path. My guess is that the decisions will skew more along the lines that will increase the already massive economies of scale in 2g TDMA/GSM or GPRS or EDGE or 3g WCDMA. It goes without saying that 3g WCDMA also means that IPR holders will have to follow the mix-and-match-with-a-cap guidelines of the 3g Patent Platform.