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

To: carranza2 who wrote (144608)	8/28/2006 3:26:57 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

More datapoints for the legally inclined....Qualcomm's response to Nokia's request for a stay at the ITC. There is also a response from the ITC Staff but it is entirely confidential. My initial reading of this is that Qualcomm didnt bring up any particular GSM patents for licensing....but did reserve that right for after the non-assert was over. It seems to me that should preserve the right for Qualcomm (absent any requirements that might have come from ETSI membership). edisweb.usitc.gov Instead, Nokia claims that QUALCOMM should be estopped from taking actions that are expressly permitted by the CDMA Agreement. Nokia does not allege that QUALCOMM ever stated or promised that it did not have or would not assert patents covering Nokia’s GSM products. l5 Instead, as discussed below, Nokia’s “estoppel” defense is based entirely on alleged inferences. These alleged inferences are based almost exclusively on things that QUALCOMM allegedly did not do: 0 QUALCOMM did not tout the benefits of GSM, only of CDMA. l6 However, none of the quoted statements says anything about whether QUALCOMM holds any IP rights covering GSM technology. 0 QUALCOMM did not mention GSM coverage of its own patents in a FAQ17 posted on the Internet about whether it had sufficient IPR coverage to offer its own products. l8 In an effort to overcome the obvious non-sequitur of this argument, Nokia contends without support that “industry standard practice” is to tout one’s own patent portfolio in response to such FAQs. QUALCOMM did not initially assert patents against Nokia’s GSM products.’’ Evidently, Nokia’s theory is that, because practically everyone else who has claimed patent infringement by Nokia has focused on the “deep pockets” of Nokia’s GSM products, QUALCOMM’s initial choice to do otherwise justified an inference that it could not or would not everpursue Nokia’s GSM products for infringement. - QUALCOMM delayed in declaring its patents to ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) as GSM-essential, thus lulling Nokia into a false sense of security that QUALCOMM would not assert patents against Nokia’s GSM products in the future.20 Nokia’s account of being misled is flatly contradicted by 0 6.1.1 of the CDMA Agreement, which expressly reserves QUALCOMM’s right to assert patents against Nokia’s non-CDMA products - including GSM products - after the expiration of the three-year non-assertion period. 0 When GSM came up during negotiations, QUALCOMM did not mention any of its own patents except the SnapTrack patents.21 It would be more accurate to say that when the SnapTrack patents were discussed, both GSM and CDMA were explicitly mentioned. [ allegation. [ 0 ]22 The face of the agreement disproves this A draft CDMA Agreement identified “the only patents that Qualcomm claimed might potentially read on GSM.” 23 This is merely a statement of the conclusion now allegedly inferred by Nokia. Nokia does not cite any portion of the draft as either purporting to provide a list of GSM patents, or as making the representation attributed by Nokia.

To: carranza2 who wrote (144608)	8/29/2006 12:47:51 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 152472

C2, having spent years in the gizzards of very big corporates, namely, BP Oil International, Castrol and Texaco, not to mention being closely involved with many others due to contact at a technical support level, I think you give them too much credit. <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. > Both could well have blundered and big. I had no idea that QCOM technology was built into GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Never even suspected it. Somebody would have to hunt into it to see if it's the case. Somebody perhaps didn't. Or perhaps obviously didn't. Big corporates are very big, but very stupid. I mean completely stupid. Unlike a human brain, which has many links to many neurons, firing simultaneously and forming instant patterns, large corporates have very slow, very imprecise and often-fragmented connections. People leave. New people have no idea what went before. Brains are limited. The CDMA negotiators wouldn't have a clue what use CDMA patents [or general patents] might be to the GSM Guild. A GSM Guilder might decide to build something into what they are doing, maybe even doing a patent search to see if it's covered, then be transferred elsewhere and the incoming people blithely continue, ignoring the patents [being ignorant] and assuming that it's in-house technology they are working on. Mqurice