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Technology Stocks : The New Qualcomm - a S&P500 company -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D.J.Smyth who wrote (10120)	5/15/2000 9:51:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 13582

Darrell - All the IDCers seem to be focusing on whether IDC will claim rights not yet negotiated for all 3g modes. I think the answer is an unequivical yes. But so what. The question really should be whether we should expect IDC to collect any meaningful (to Qualcomm) royalty revenues from Qualcomm for 3g. And on that the answer is no. I see no point in debating the first question since we agree, so I will ignore all of your comments in this regard. It [CDMA] now comprises 10% of the digitial use worldwide (with TDMA standards comprising the other 90%). aren't you assuming too much when you imply that IDCC's licensing rate the second time around will again be a mere pittance? Perhaps it will be the same as they get for TDMA - ~0.05% [based on Nokia agreement]. Perhaps that is a lot to IDC, but nothing for Qualcomm to get excited about. They invented a significant portion (specifically the air interface) of the TDMA methods applied in the IS54/136, GSM, PDC, and GPRS standards. I challenge you to state, in Engineering or English, what it is that they invented. I've seen many people make claims, but never seen anyone state what it is that they think IDC invented. I've asked this question several times and been pointed to some relatively weak patents (e.g. I talked over many of the patents for which IDC claims infringement by Ericsson. They are not strong, although very preliminarily I'll admit that the Ericsson legal team seems to be making a hash of it). One interesting way to look at it in a completely different way: before Qualcomm there were many knowledgable people claiming CDMA would never work in a mobile cell environment. Lo and behold it is now a very big thing. This is a valid criteria under US case law for strong evidence of novelty and utility (which are key to a patent). To my knowledge no such evidence exists for IDC and TDMA cell systems. i've read many of the same "patents" and did not come to a similar conclusion. [that the IDC patents are pretty weak] You and other IDCers have on several occassions pointed me to 'important' patents, and I given strong argument for their weakness. So the only question is whether an outsider should believe you or me. I've published stuff in the area of patent law. I've worked in the cell phone industry and understand the technology. No offense is intended, but it is readily apparent that you do not have the same background in either area. The problem for an outsider is that this can get pretty arcane when looked at from the bottom up (i.e. patent law and technology). Hence my oft reference to the top down evidence - that IDC's currently royalty rate is pretty darn low in toto (CDMA + TDMA + ...) and unless they have invented something phenominal for 3g things aren't likely to change much. The next Qualcomm they do not appear to be. you don't have access to over 100 IDCC applied patents relative to 3g as discussed through the ITUU meetings (methodology was discussed), yet your moderately informed opinion concludes sum total that Qualcomm is the king of the hill. You are right. Perhaps this is the 'phenominal thing' I mentioned in the previous paragraph. But given the history, I wouldn't be counting on it. i've religiously read your posts and can only recall one patent you discussed from Gary Lomp which was really a non-essential IPR that was not applicable to the 3g standard. Lomp no longer works at IDCC. what others have you discussed? I don't remember whether all of them were public or PM's with Lurgio or other IDCers. In general I don't like to burst bubbles in public, but if asked, ... . In total I've looked in detail at between 10 and 15 IDC patents over the last 2 or 3 years, many documented on SI (either public or PM). But I'll concede most aren't as bad as the one you referenced. Given that I do not keep an archive of my own posts, I'll leave it to you to find them. Sorry. as for the "10mghz thing", I would suggest that you review the ITU open documents fully before concluding this is a mild downer. it is actually very significant for TDMA, TDD and TD-SCDMA TDMA I know little about and generally don't really care about (although I look in on IDC's suit against Ericsson). TDD CDMA is designed to operate in the same frequency space as one normal channel (i.e. 5MHz) as per the 98 W-CDMA spec. SCDMA is worthless so you are correct that I haven't looked at it. tests involving CDMA2000 have also shown improved operability in the 10mghz-15mghz relative to data applications I'd love to see the documentation for that. Performance along what axis? Truly interested. My guesses: Power consumed vs bit rate - very unlikely. Multipath resolution - unless they have a huge number of fingers on the correlator this is also very unlikely. Trunking efficiency - No surprise but the question is whether it is worth all of the other penalties. Clark