To: Raymond who wrote (18381 ) 11/16/1998 1:38:00 PM From: Gregg Powers Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 152472
Raymond: A litigation strategy based on an illegitimate position hardly would provoke material concessions from companies such as Nokia or Ericsson and can hardly be the platform for "blackmail." My view is obviously quite different. Let's face it, philosophically I believe that if I invent something, call it CDMA, and it proves better than your product, called it TDMA-based GSM, then you should NOT be able to "invent" a competing CDMA-based product that incorporates my technology without compensating me for the economic opportunity cost. This is the major thrust of our disagreement. Ericsson and Nokia were free to invent CDMA and bring it to market. They persisted with TDMA-based GSM until it became apparent that CDMA was a commercial success and that CDMA-based technologies represented a bona-fide threat to their TDMA-based franchises. I know that you will respond with the same old rhetoric that Ericsson has been working on CDMA for years...but if you are objective, honest or even just a simple historian, you could research the anti-CDMA campaign that was waged right up until the first CDMA systems launched in 1996. Have you forgotten that Bill Frezza was the former director of marketing and business development for Ericsson? Have you forgotten his comments, circa 1996, as to QC's pending bankruptcy? Do you remember the comments about "CDMA being an unmitigated disaster at 800MHZ?" Well I do, and I have a copy of the white paper that ERICY circulated describing why CDMA was spectrally inferior to TDMA-based technologies. The hypocracy is breathtaking. So ERICY and NOK/A now want to do W-CDMA rather than IS-95C or some other QC-sponsored derivative. If they can do this without infringing on QC's patents, without incorporating Qualcomm's technology, I say more power to them...go ahead and compete in the marketplace with the end solution. However, if they cannot implement W-CDMA without QC's IPR, then I can see no reason in the world why Qualcomm should subsidize its competition. Qualcomm has stated that it will license its IPR to all comers, on fair and equitable terms, in exchange for a converged standard. Without convergence, the Europeans will not be entitled to confiscate QC's technology and club Qualcomm over the head with it...that does not seem to be particularly unfair. Having spoken with just about a dozen operators on this issue, there is a clear consensus that W-CDMA cannot go forward without QC's IPR...so if QC holds firm, ERICY must blink. Over the last few months we have seen some softening, on the margin, in the ERICY position and I continue to believe it likely that convergence will be negotiated rather than litigated. Best regards, Gregg