To: quartersawyer who wrote (3809 ) 3/22/2006 9:44:27 AM From: Eric L Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 9255 The October 28, 2005 Conference Call on the EC IPR Complaints chapq, << Eric-- in the October 28th conference call, what do you think might have been the response to something like this: Why did those companies among you which have licenses agree to the royalty terms of your existing contracts with Qualcomm? >> That would have been a perfectly legitimate and appropriate question since QUALCOMM managed to secure licenses with just about everybody that was anybody in UMTSland except for other companies operating patent factories (e.g. InterDigital) while shielding themselves from non-royalty bearing cross-licenses by virtue of the fact that they do not manufacture whole product. I'm sure that Nokia's Maurits Dolmans acting as moderator, or Ericsson's Kasim Alfalahi, were prepared to give a brief and concise answer to that question were it asked without giving away too much of any substance. Playing to the audience beyond the few attendees, the answer probably would have alluded to the intentional delays that QUALCOMM caused in WCDMA technology development, standardization, and subsequent commercialization, and the fact that QUALCOMM was championing a proprietary competitive 3G technology in which they held considerably more essential IP on a proportional basis than they did in WCDMA, and that they had tried to force incorporation of key elements of their proprietary technology into the WCDMA standard by threatening to use their own IP to block any cdma implementation that didn't contain it, and the complainants licensed to complete first phase commercialization and commence rollouts for licensed IMT-2000 spectrum holders on a reasonably timely -- albeit already delayed -- basis, without resorting to litigation, while continuing to work towards a more industry favorable solution in the UMTS IPR Working Group originally formed in February 1998. As a practical matter, and despite the fact that QUALCOMM was a non-participant in UMTS requirement setting or early WCDMA development in Europe and/or Asia, none of the complainants ever doubted that QUALCOMM held essential patents applicable and enforceable for at least WCDMA (and probably UTRA-TDD HCR & LCR) and possibly even semiconductor topology and by the year 2000 QUALCOMM had divested both their infra and handset divisions, honed their IPR business model, and survived a court challenge in both Japan and Europe to a handful of early essential CDMA patents that applied to WCDMA, positioning them nicely to be first in line to collect licenses and royalties and set the rate that Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola could potentially charge on a proportional basis based on their own substantial portfolios of essential IP. Best, - Eric -