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To: w molloy who wrote (1452)2/3/1999 7:50:00 PM
From: Caxton Rhodes  Respond to of 34857
 
w.- the IDC stuff is in some of the 10Qs from a year or two or 3 ago. Chec the SEC edgar site. Search for IDC.
Caxton



To: w molloy who wrote (1452)2/3/1999 7:54:00 PM
From: Dave  Respond to of 34857
 
W. Molloy:

So how do IDC get around QCOM's CDMA IPR?

IDC sued Qualcomm for patent infringement several years ago. In the end, there was a settlement (I forgot if the case went to trial, or who won). However, one of the conditions was that Qualcomm would license a portion of their patents to IDC, and IDC was allowed to re-license that portion of Qualcomm patents to a third party. The first portion (I think) was royalty free. There is a second portion that Qualcomm will license but for a fee.

The number, or coverage (which is really the most important thing), of these patents I am unsure of.

Ok, Qualcomm posters, was the following a pretty accurate statement?

dave



To: w molloy who wrote (1452)2/3/1999 10:39:00 PM
From: Jim Lurgio  Respond to of 34857
 
wmolly,
In my opinion there is no need to get around Q,s IPR as IDC is around it already. This was mentioned after the IDC Vs QCOM case long ago were Q paid IDC 5 million.

My opinion I know isn't qualified and most certainly should be deemed unreliable but I would suggest my reasoning makes sense for one reason. Money Talks.

Fact ! On March 12th 1998 Alcatel joined the B-CDMA consortium and paid IDC 25 million for the priviledge to buy ASICS. Fact! 02/01/99 Nokia pays 70 million for past usage of TDMA patents and decides IDC's Broadband IPR is of value and can help them in the 3G effort.
Other facts Siemens and Samsung combined paid 55 million plus major R@D efforts .

The legal departments of Alcatel and Nokia to me had to have considered the IPR issue a non event.

I can't see how they could pay a combined 95 million to any company and expect that company's IPR isn't valid.

Does that make sense ?



To: w molloy who wrote (1452)2/4/1999 3:30:00 AM
From: Clarksterh  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 34857
 
InterDigital does indeed do CDMA cell systems, but they specialize in fixed (i.e. WLL) systems. Qualcomm's real strength is mobile cell CDMA systems. There is some overlap, but such things as soft handoff, and power control are just not anywhere near as critical in WLL. For the actual settlement, the Qualcomm '96 10-K says:

In connection with the settlement and dismissal of the Company's patent litigation with InterDigital, the Company received, among other rights, a fully-paid, royalty free license to use and to sublicense the use of those patents claimed by InterDigital to be essential to IS-95.

And more interestingly the InterDigital '96 10-K says:

In 1994, ITC also entered into a CDMA cross-license agreement with Qualcomm Incorporated to settle litigation filed in 1993. In return for a one-time payment of $5.5 million, ITC granted to Qualcomm a fully-paid, royalty free, worldwide license to use and sublicense certain specified and existing ITC CDMA patents (including related divisional and continuation patents) to make and sell products for IS-95-type wireless applications, including, but not limited to, cellular, PCS, wireless local loop and satellite applications. Qualcomm has the right to sublicense certain of ITC's licensed CDMA patents so that Qualcomm's licensees will be free to manufacture and sell IS-95-type CDMA products without requiring any payment to ITC. Neither ITC's patents concerning cellular overlay and interference cancellation nor its current inventions are licensed to Qualcomm. Under the settlement, Qualcomm granted to InterDigital a royalty-free license to use and to sublicense the patent that Qualcomm had asserted against InterDigital and a royalty-bearing license to use certain Qualcomm CDMA patents in InterDigital's B-CDMA products, if needed. InterDigital does not believe that it will be necessary to use any of Qualcomm's royalty-bearing or non-licensed patents in its B-CDMA system. In addition, Qualcomm agreed, subject certain restrictions, to license certain CDMA patents on a royalty bearing basis to those InterDigital customers that desire to use Qualcomm's patents. The license to InterDigital does not apply to IS-95-type systems, or to satellite systems. Certain of Qualcomm's patents, relating to key IS-95 features such as soft and softer hand-off, variable rate vocoding, and orthogonal (Walsh) coding, are not licensed to InterDigital.

Emphasis mine.

Note that InterDigital is second only to Qualcomm in CDMA knowledge/hands-on-experience and they are very litigious and have obtained lots of concessions from lots of companies. Yet the best they were able to do with Qualcomm was pretty minimal. I have no doubt that they probably have some stuff that might help bypass some Qualcomm patents, but I also have no doubt that they are missing a lot of stuff as well since they don't emphasize mobile. Just FYI and MO.

Clark