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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (30950)	9/2/2000 2:06:08 PM
From: saukriver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

QCOM could sue whenever it finds someone using, making, having made, or selling something that infringes one of its patents. As a practical matter, companies typically wait until something infringing is distributed as the damages are usually speculative until then. I suppose if NOK ever demonstrated it made a WCDMA system, Qualcomm could launch the jihad. And I think the courts would force them to license all manufacturers. Absent some showing of an antitrust issue, I don't think a court would force QCOM to license its technology to any particular handset maker. "Refusal to deal" was tried by Microsoft against Bristol. Bristol argued that MSFT was obligated because of its dominance of the desktop to license Windows; MSFT refused. The court agreed with MSFT (although the judge just slammed MSFT with a puny $1 million judgment for some deceptive practice by MSFT). Generally companies can refuse to deal with others. That becomes somewhat murkier at the point where a company's market dominance starts to raise antitrust issues. It is not an uncommon remedy in antitrust to see a requirement that companies license; licensing on the same terms was part of the potential settlement last Spring in US v. MSFT. It is therefore intriguing to consider that QCOM could not license to NOK (just as Rambus is saying it will shut out Micron). Even though that might begin to raise antitrust issues, however, I frankly don't see the harm to consumers (as opposed to harm to competitors that antitrust law generally does not protect) so long as MOT, ERICY, Samsung, KYO, are licensed to make CDMA phones. That MSFT shut out Bristol hurt Bristol, but there were plenty of other companies willing to join MSFT value chain. "Harm to a competitor" is not enough for an antitrust claim. And the issue of QCOM's refusal to deal with NOK is academic at this juncture as NOK has thus far been unwilling to buy a license from QCOM at the price QCOM has no doubt offered the pigheaded Finns. saukriver

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (30950)	9/2/2000 3:32:48 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Well I certainly agree that Dr J. is no Farnsworth. However I'll maintain that the GSM cabal's strategy is to delay and obfuscate. So for me there is a parallel (but by no means a one to one correspondence) with the Farnsworth/Sarnoff story. The importance of time is the reason for my calling attention to the German spectrum auctions in a previous post. As stated in that post I disagree with the DoCoMo part of Callisto's thesis. In fact since I view time to be so important in this "conflict", I'm overjoyed at DoCoMo's pell-mell rush to deployment. Given the news today from Japan Telecom Co and DDI's plans, next year's developments in Japan should provide a very interesting, high visibility test. As for the tactic (RMBS like) of denying future licensing to those who don't sign up soon, I'm rather fond of "keeping options open". Plus I believe this approach could lead to other problems. lurqer