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

To: Ingenious who wrote (14172)	8/26/1998 9:47:00 PM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Leland - my limited understanding of patent law tells me that your scenario (that would be very bad for Qualcomm) is totally impossible. Jon.

To: Ingenious who wrote (14172)	8/27/1998 12:34:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Leland - qcom cant assume patents will save the day because a competitor will often make decisions on a cost-benefit analysis. Agreed, but Qualcomm had the field to themselves for so long they have probably sewn up almost all of the best patents. Thus the cost/benefit analysis is likely to show a strong bias to licensing from the Q. Also, don't forget that Ericsson does not currently have a viable workaround or they or ETSI would have already announced it as a way to increase the pressure on Qualcomm. Thus, since they do not currently have a work around, another factor is the time it takes them to find such a work around. This may well be measured in years given the amount of time Qualcomm worked on it. It would be nice to know with more certainty that Qualcomm has it wrapped up with no easy bypass available, but only an expert in the field who has been prospecting in the CDMA IPR field would know how thoroughly Qualcomm claimed all of the best IPR. The problem is most such experts work at Qualcomm with a few others at the competition, so there is little unbiased info from this direction. Clark PS To put it another way, if Sutter, of Sutter's Mill, had kept his mouth shut and spent 10 years scouring the territory, with a team of equally quiet prospectors, for all the best mine sites they could find, how much chance would there be that any of the richest sites would still be available? And if you needed at least three interdependent such sites to make it economical? Qualcomm's position is probably somewhat analagous to the last, but only one of the prospectors can actually give you a better idea of how thoroughly it is sewn up.