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

To: JeffreyHF who wrote (57941)	12/22/2006 9:49:09 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197636

Attorney fees around the world are only one component.Additionally, there are huge expenses and fees incurred by engineering, economic, and other experts,and for travel, lodging, copying, stenographic, and other costs of complex litigation. Good point.... As for whether they are ultimately "justified", the litigation and regulatory systems are inherently unpredictable. A recent case between Toshiba and Hynix over NAND flash patents highlighted the unpredictability of these rulings for me. Toshiba invented NAND flash in the late 80's and commercialized it in the '90's. They had a royalty bearing license with Hynix which expired in '02 and the two parties couldnt come to an agreement on the terms of a renewal. Toshiba sued before the ITC using multiple patents....and the ITC ruled that Hynix wasnt infringing. I am fairly sure that Toshiba is licensing these patents to the rest of the NAND industry but they lost anyway. An ugly thing to think about, but what if Qualcomm actually lost their initial WCDMA patent case against Nokia? Slacker