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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (13887)	8/18/1998 1:37:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Maurice - Dave an I seem to agree broadly on the IPR issues, but that is because both of us have a somewhat fuzzy understanding of the technology and exactly where QCOM's patents fall in it. Thus we both expect that eventually Ericsson et al will be able, in some way, to circumvent the patents, but neither of us really know how long that it likely to take. The problem with patents is that without being an expert in the particular area it is hard to tell whether a patent is really secure from both frontal attack and out-flanking. One of the common mistakes made by the patent office, which after all cannot have experts in all areas, is to grant a patent for something which has been in common usage for years by people in the industry (i.e. the item does not meet the non-obvious requirement for patentability.). Thus Dave and I must make our assessments that QCOM is pretty secure technicaly based on the fact that they had the field to themselves for so long, and they seem to have done a good job getting protection. (Gregg's attorneys have hopefully verified that all of the obvious not-strictly-technical problems, such as poor terminology (surprisingly important!), are not an issue.) The only way to make a better assessment of the technical viability would be to get an expert in CDMA cell systems and have them analyze it. The problem is that most of them work at Qualcomm or the competition. Clark PS Dave, feel free to add/disagree.