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

To: whisperer who wrote (76828)	5/2/2008 7:25:07 PM
From: Stock Farmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197155

You're welcome. QCOM's obligation "to offer an irrevocable license that is FRAND", is not the same thing as "an (implicit) automatic irrevocable license", which is what NOK claims. What NOK claims is more subtle. It goes like this. QCOM has made a voluntary undertaking to ETSI to offer an irrevocable license on FRAND terms. This undertaking, passing through the sausage grinder of the French legal system, becomes an offer of such a license to all members of ETSI. The clever twist by Nokia is their claim that they have accepted some of Qualcomm's offers, implicitly, by virtue of actually practicing those inventions that are the subject of such offers. Even more clever, NOK also claims that by virtue of not practicing any other inventions, it has not accepted these other offers. Any of Qualcomm's offers, having been voluntarily made for due consideration by an able party, having been accepted by Nokia represent a contract between Qualcomm and Nokia. In Delaware law as well as French law. The irrevocable license(s) Nokia claims it holds issue from these contracts. Presto digito, Nokia has licenses to any of the patents Qualcomm declared "essential or likely to be essential" to to the ETSI standards. By the way, the exposure to Nokia in this argument (aside from its validity, which I am presenting at face value) is that there are some patents Nokia is indeed infringing which Qualcomm did not declare essential to a standard. Which, apparently, is an exposure Nokia is willing to live with. What I meant by "bad faith negotiations" (I realize this may not be a legal term), is the case where the licensee (NOK) can indefinitely drag out the royalty negotiations. Why is a dragging dispute Nokia's fault? All Qualcomm needs to do to cut the debate short is offer terms to Nokia that Nokia finds acceptable. The reason things are dragging out is that the intransigence of one side is being met by the obstinacy of the other. In actual fact, Nokia and Qualcomm are taking steps to resolve the dispute, but before either party can return to the table they need to rattle a few sabres and bang a few drums and send the children of many lawyers to very expensive private schools. Which is all well and good... if you are the director of a private school. The longer, the better. At the moment, Qualcomm's management prefers the extended drawn out process to the shortcut, and so does Nokia's. So they are both making the decision to prolong the fight. Because both of them prefer it that way. As soon as one side or the other decides that holding out is worth less than giving in, they will come to agreement. The art is to have both sides reach the same conclusion at the same time. However long it takes. That is not at all unreasonable. But it sure is frustrating.