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Technology Stocks : Interdigital Communication(IDCC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: w molloy who wrote (3822)	2/10/2000 12:04:00 AM
From: Gus	Respond to of 5195

Molly, Follow the bouncing ball.... Since Darrell already answered your 2nd question, I'll answer your first question -- "You assert that prior art casts serious doubts on QCOM royalties" I said that the presence of a real alternative to narrowband CDMA casts serious doubts on QCOM's ability to collect the royalties it wants. That's obvious. Does that sound like I'm saying that QCOM will not be able to collect any royalties? Of course not. That's actually a quality of earnings issue for QCOM and an opportunity for IDC. The IDC opportunity is potentially bigger because it has a large body of TDMA patents that are in the process of being adjudicated in court. Let me simplify it for you: IDC's revenue potential comes from: 1) past infringement of its TDMA patents (the results of the ERICY lawsuit will most certainly affect IDC's ability to collect on its TDMA patents, but NOT its CDMA patents) 2) ongoing use of its TDMA patents (see 1) 3) prospective use of its TDMA and CDMA patents during the transition from 2g TDMA/GSM to 3g WCDMA (5-10 years) 4) WCDMA ASIC sales from nos. 2 and 3. That should be clear enough for even you. I'm putting these links here so this post won't be such a total waste of time: List of 97 patents (25 issued in 1999 and 2000) generated by a cursory search for "Interdigital" at the USPTO site: 164.195.100.11 List of 14 patents issued to Donald L. Schilling still listed under SCS which IDC acquired in 1992 Message 12804762 List of 43 patents issued to IDC while under the name, International Mobile Machines. Message 12804790 List of 5 patents licensed to Qualcomm in 1994 for IS-95 only and for use in spectrum NOT to exceed 10Mhz. Message 12827090 Like any good technology company, QCOM has the ability to design around these 5 patents given the amount of time that has passed, but so what? The most important point to be made is that those 5 patents form part of a large body of CDMA patents that have been integrated with a large body of TDMA patents, both of which are being reduced to practice on a daily basis under the Nokia co-development deal in the WCDMA trials. Technology matters. Partnerships matter. Timing obviously matters since the palette of the RF and mixed-signal chip designer continues to grow richer -- the copper process, SiGe, SOI, SOC, SIP, DSP, etc. IP integration, fixed and mobile integration, refarming of frequencies, and a coherent patent platform that minimizes the amount of patent infringement and shareholder lawsuits are just some of the other things that matter too. These are just some of the variables that enhance the already considerable forces of scale at work behind the global defacto standard (TDMA/GSM) which is expected to generate more than 90% of expected 2000 sales of 410 million handsets. Think about that.