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

To: Rajala who wrote (15323)	9/22/1998 10:29:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Raj - Article said all the key QCOM patents had been left out from the current W-CDMA proposal. This is the complete article to which you are refering: exchange2000.com Nowhere in it does it say that WCDMA bypasses all Qualcomm IPR. It just says it "bypasses key Qualcomm patents", and given that ETSI has admitted in numerous forums that WCDMA does use Qualcomm IPR (for instance, see article back in January, where head of ETSI 3g committee was quoted as saying Qualcomm IPR was needed for WCDMA.), you position should perhaps be rethought. Clark

To: Rajala who wrote (15323)	9/22/1998 10:42:00 AM
From: Gregg Powers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Rajala: Your conclusions are flawed for several reasons, the most important being that you are assuming that Businessweek's facts are perfect, or even close, which they are not. Several differing W-CDMA standards were proposed originally, with Ericsson sponsoring one flavor and Japan's DoCoMo sponsoring another. ERICY cleverly coalesced its standard with the DoCoMo proposal and this proforma beast is the basis for the current ETSI proposal. Due to ETSI's organizational structure, QC was given very limited input into the creation of this standard. ETSI, DoCoMo, Siemans, Phillips, Lucent and most everybody else save Ericsson have acknowledged that the proposed W-CDMA solution includes much of QC's fundamental and basic IPR (such as the rake receiver, soft hand-off and power control). Qualcomm has applied (and received) patents in the U.S. and Europe and the company's internal patent counsel, and our external patent counsel, have researched this topic at length. Our conclusion is that the Europeans simply cannot go forward with the proposed W-CDMA standard with materially and obviously infringing QC's IPR. ETSI has acknowledged this fact and therefore asked QC to make its IPR available on reasonable commercial terms (as defined by ETSI's protocols). Qualcomm has taken the position that ERICY has designed incompatibilities with IS-95 into W-CDMA for the specific purpose of non-convergence, i.e. the incompatibilities do not provide any benefit beyond promoting incompatibility. QC therefore responded that it is willing to work toward convergence, that it will license on fair and equitable terms, but it will NOT license its IPR for a W-CDMA standard that is specifically designed to penalize North American equipment manufacturers rather than to maximize network performance. Obviously this debate is legally and technically complex. But, some conclusions are pretty obvious if you think about it logically. (1) If W-CDMA did not include QC's IPR, then ETSI would not have asked Qualcomm to license such IPR, i.e. why ask for something you don't need or don't want? (2) if the European's could safely and legally circumvent QC's IPR, then there would be no debate; companies such as Nokia and Ericsson would be busily deploying W-CDMA around the world (as opposed to waging a PR campaign to pressure QC to change its position), (3) despite much talk of W-CDMA product, all of Nokia's and Ericsson's press releases have been carefully worded to indicate that these are "test" or "demonstration" systems, i.e. the Europeans know that they cannot deploy W-CDMA commercially without infringement (4) if Qualcomm felt that its position was weak, it would have acceded to ETSI's demand and licensed its IPR for whatever royalties it could get, i.e. it's better to get something than to get nothing. You can, and will, believe whatever you chose, but the facts do not foot to the PR coming from the Ericsson camp. QC management is neither suicidal or stupid and they would not risk a fight without believing that the company's position is extremely strong. There will be "no stealing by the pinko sissies" because, despite the rhetoric, ERICY and NOK understand the situation as do the system operators. This debate WILL get resolved, PROBABLY BEFORE yearend and QC will get paid for its IPR in whatever CDMA-based 3G standard is ultimately adopted for Europe. Best regards, Gregg