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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (48469)	11/5/2005 7:33:35 PM
From: engineer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196474

<<QUALCOMM also patented much more systematically and aggressively ... and with a much different mind set from the outset than the Europeans or Asians [patent for profit v. patent to protect or patent to cross-license] -- particularly in the late eighties and early to mid-nineties -- and they created an extremely aggressive, comprehensive, and effective IP business model which they evolved over time. >> I would suggest that you go back and review history on what happened with the open standard and GSM patents. Everyone took a very agressive patent stance on thos, so much so that the Europeans almost got outflanked by MOT. A couple of years ago someone posted a white paper outlining the history of the GSM patent base. I would suggest that Qualcomm patent approacg was moderate compared to the GSM one that took place and the fact that GSM really never congealed as a standard, but rahter 13 standards that were similar, but ndiffernt so that the phone stack actually runs 13 differnt modes of code.

To: Eric L who wrote (48469)	11/5/2005 10:12:18 PM
From: Observer	Respond to of 196474

<<patent for profit vs. cross-licensing>> Eric, I'm sure you are not trying to foster the notion that European companies do not book profits from licensing fees and royalties. Perhaps your point is that sticking the Asian hordes with a structural disadvantage is proper, acceptable behavior. Community-minded, you might say. Whereas charging a uniform royalty to all comers is gauche and audacious. Even "aggressive". QUALCOMM didn't sneak CDMA into 3GSM. The ETSI/3GPP crowd expected to exact the usual tribute for admission. It seems to me there is a difference in the way different companies have used IPR. Is a patent "a document granting an inventor sole rights to an invention"? Or is it a tool in conjunction with quasi-governmental standards for protecting markets? [O]

To: Eric L who wrote (48469)	11/6/2005 8:52:15 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196474

... and it was called CDMA2000, a proprietary open standard. OTOH, they could not create or commercialize the collaborative open comittee-based UTRA (WCDMA) technology and standards without the patented IP (declared to ETSI/ARIB/3GPP as essential but eventually needing to be adjudicated or agreed to be such) of Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, NEC, Hitachi & Mitsubishi (Renesas), Matsushita, Siemens, DoCoMo, IntedDigital, et al, and were forced to agree to license their own IP to others on FRAND terms. I think those comments are essentially in agreement with my statement that Qualcomm had the ability to create a 3G CDMA standard while Nokia and Ericsson did not. Of course, Qualcomm took the risk that the ITU would go with a non-CDMA standard or that they would have to spend years in court trying to get a resolution. OTOH, if Ericsson had gone down a non-CDMA path they took the risk that a major GSM carrier could have gone down the CDMA evolutionary path. Qualcomm wanted a converged standard and was willing to reduce their royalty rate to get it. Ericsson wanted to deploy the version of WCDMA that they had already developed. In the end, the compromise gave Qualcomm the fully royalty rate and gave Ericsson their version of WCDMA (chiprate, non-GPS, etc...). Ericsson could have gotten the 3% royalty rate that they are now looking for, alll they had to do was change the chip rate, use GPS, and agree to the rest of the five principles. Unless Qualcomm gives me a good explanation, I'll agree that their licensing techniques look discriminatory, but I dont think that they violate the fair and reasonable standard. The royalty rate was the product of a compromise on the converged standard. Slacker