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

To: slacker711 who wrote (144603)	8/28/2006 2:58:15 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

What you say is supportable, but I think unlikely. The Nokia brief admittedly does say that: As of 2001, Qualcomm had never claimed patents reading on GSM products (Nokia's or otherwise) nor had it (to Nokia's knowledge) claimed the licensing of GSM patents to anyone, ever. To the contrary, Qualcomm's public statements regarding GSM related entirely to its efforts to license GSM from others... This is very slick language which needs to be looked at very carefully. 1.- When did Qualcomm begin to claim GSM IPR? According to the brief, Q began doing so "as of" 2001 but there is no clarity that the claims commenced before or after the execution of the agreement. No high priced advocate leaves that kind of clarity in the barn if it helps his cause. If I knew that NOK had positively not been told about Q's IPR claims before the execution of the 2001 deal, you can be absolutely certain my memos wold have trumpeted that fact in about 32 different ways. This brief does not, an important tea leaf, IMO. Or perhaps simply an indication of NOK's lawyers failure to write clear expositions, an interpretation I do not favor. The brief does suggest that Q failed to inform NOK of its patents' applicability to the GSM family of standards during the negotiations which ended with the 2001 deal, but does not do a very good job--or any job at all--of explaining why NOK as the alleged infringer was ignorant of their applicability. Or why, if the 2001 deal and its 2004 extension was only for CDMA products, Q had any obligation to inform it of (1) something NOK probably already knew, (2) an issue (GSM) which if you believe Rudi Brewer was not under consideration at the time, or (3) something potentially covered by a non-assert. 2.- The spin about Q's "public statements" and licensing of GSM rights to anyone else is irrelevant if the claim had been made to NOK before the execution of the agreement, something which is not made chrystal clear as it should be if it is favorable to NOK. The problem I have is based on my assumption that NOK and Q, as perhaps the most sophisticated global producers and consumers of telecomm IPR, and previous bitter contestants, were probably completely aware of each others respective IPR positions and how they applied to the standards under which their products were made. This is my working assumption as I refuse to believe the issue would have been left to chance. These are incredibly sophisticated players, not children, playing for huge amounts of money. My assumption may be wrong, in which case all falls by the wayside. However, I cannot conceive of both NOK and Q being ignorant of the precise details of their respective positions when they signed the 2001 deal or its 2004 extension. My interpetation is supported by the fact that this silly brief argues out of both sides of its mouth, e.g., it says that the 2001 deal was supposed to buy overall patent peace but states on the other hand that there were aspects of the problems facing the two companies which were not capable of resolution and were therefore identified and postponed. How can a high priced advocate say "full and complete patent peace" and "issues postponed" in the same document is beyond me. A sophisticated reader, such as a judge or an opponent waiting with sharpened knives, will surely note the contradiction and pounce on it. The non-assert probably applies to IPR in existence before the 2001 deal was executed. If it is drafted broadly enough, you can be assured that the non-assert applies to IPR for use in standards not mentioned, e.g., GSM, as Brewer's opinion specifically notes. Now, if the non-assert applies only to issues which were identified, as Nokia may be claiming, and such issues do not include GSM, then in view of Brewer's opinion, how can NOK claim surprise and ambush, assuming that it was aware of both companies' respective IPR portfolios and how they applied to products each made? I doubt very seriously that the non-assert applies to IPR created after 2001, subject of course to the deal Q gives for subsequently developed IPR, a subject which is a bit murky to me. In any event, as Brewer stated, it is clear that the deal applied only to CDMA and related standards, so the applicability to GSM of IPR developed after 2001 should not be subject to the non-assert. I wish we had more information on these matters. Most important, I wish I had some way of verifying my assumption that both parties were mutually aware of the details of their IPR and how it applied to the various standards to which they manufactured. This is an unverifiable assumption but a reasonable one, I think.