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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (143295)	7/4/2006 8:03:24 PM
From: Loren1	Respond to of 152472

I think I know a little about Qcom. Their corporate HQ is only a 15 minute drive down the street from where I live. Anyway I'd like to have just what they pay to their patent lawyers UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER July 4, 2006 Texas Instruments and Broadcom have filed complaints in South Korea accusing Qualcomm of using its market dominance to demand excessive royalties, the latest in a string of accusations against the San Diego-based wireless technology giant. The companies filed complaints June 23 with South Korea's Fair Trade Commission about Qualcomm's practices in that country, the commission said yesterday. Two Korean companies that make software for cell phones, Nextreaming Corp. and THINmultimedia, filed similar complaints earlier this year. Qualcomm did not returns calls seeking comment yesterday. The company's shares closed at $39.46 on the Nasdaq, down 61 cents, or 1.5 percent. Texas Instruments, based in Dallas, Texas, and Irvine-based Broadcom confirmed that they had lodged the complaints. “Serious issues related to intellectual property, standardization and competition law have been raised by Qualcomm's business practices worldwide,” Texas Instruments' general counsel Joe Hubach said in a statement. “Qualcomm is engaging in licensing and other practices that violate antitrust laws,” he said. “These abuses include tying discounts in licensing rates to whether a licensee agrees to purchase chip sets exclusively from Qualcomm and threatening to withhold supply from customers who also purchase products from other competitors.” Broadcom spokeswoman Laura Brandlin said only that the company thinks that the commission will give the complaints prompt and fair consideration. The complaints are part of a much larger battle pitting some of the giants of the wireless industry against Qualcomm. As wireless carriers upgrade their networks to accommodate Web surfing, TV, music and video games, Qualcomm's CDMA technology is poised to be used, in one form or another, on virtually every cell phone in the world. The battle is over how much in licensing fees other companies will have to pay Qualcomm for use of its patented technology. Besides the complaints lodged in South Korea, Qualcomm faces two patent infringement suits, an antitrust suit, a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission and complaints alleging “anti-competitive” actions filed by six companies with European regulators. Broadcom, which introduced its own cell phone chips this year, and Texas Instruments, the world's largest maker of cell phone chips, have been wrangling with Qualcomm over its royalties for more than a year. Qualcomm makes money by licensing its technology to cell phone makers and by selling chips that power cell phones. In the case of Texas Instruments, the company is not only a competitor to Qualcomm in chip-making but also a customer because it licenses the company's technology for use in its own chips. Broadcom does not have a license to use Qualcomm's CDMA technology. Both Texas Instruments and Broadcom are among the six companies that last year asked the European Commission to investigate Qualcomm. The others are Ericsson, NEC, Nokia and Panasonic Mobile Communications. Qualcomm has counterattacked by filing five patent-infringement cases, three of them against Broadcom and two against Nokia. Both Broadcom and Nokia have said they have done nothing wrong.