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To: Dave who wrote (17477)	12/20/2001 12:01:05 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

Hypothetically....let's say it is now 2009 and the essential patents for CDMA have expired. You could (theoretically) design a CDMA handset which uses Q's expired patents....but avoids their later patents. The problem is that I doubt that this handset would be compatible with existing CDMA2000 and W-CDMA networks. These standards have incorporated Q's later patents (even if they werent essential). Sure....you could try and design a new CDMA standard which would avoid all of Q's patents (this would now be possible)....but which operator would switch to it? The operators will have already spent hundreds of billions on their existing infrastructure. The only way I see a problem arising for Qualcomm is if someone can create a W-CDMA (or CDMA2000) compatible handset using ONLY early 90's patents. I have a feeling that this would be almost impossible. Slacker