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

To: Clarksterh who wrote (22492)	2/4/1999 4:19:00 PM
From: marginmike	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

We are talking about a million a quarter that's it, who cares. If infastructure straightens out it will be peanuts

To: Clarksterh who wrote (22492)	2/4/1999 4:59:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

PCS/Cellular royalty dispute Clark, while I haven't seen the contract, apparently it was using numbers, now words. I'd originally said that Koreans could claim that the word cellular included PCS. That is not the case. The spectrum bounds were stated. I think Gregg confirmed that. Also, this isn't chickenfeed. With WWeb in PCS, these royalties will be big dollars. It is just royalties in Korea, not worldwide, but that is still a lot of money. Also, as you say, if you get an 'easy mark' reputation, the litigation will mount. Interdigital got paid out so that Qualcomm could get on with cdmaOne without prospective customers worrying about a court case outcome. There was no court case with Interdigital. Neither was there admission by Q! that Interdigital patents were infringed, but it was important to get on with things. That judgement seems to have been wise. But it would tempt others to chance a few legal fees in the hope of a payout. Ericy is playing for the big one on VW40 and their claims that IS-95 breaches Ericy patents and that VW40 doesn't need any Q! patents but Q! should sell those patents which Ericy doesn't need for a derisory price. It doesn't seem that Q! is inclined to cave in. Good! The Koreans seem to be hoping for some international political power to rob Q! of their contractual rights and add PCS royalties to the Korean pot. While the European governments [other than British] might support them, the USA won't be of a mind to support Korea. Assuming of course that the contract is as clear as it appears to be. It all seems to stem from the Koreans whining about how much royalty they have to pay Q! for the use of Qualcomm technology. I'm whining about how low it is, but I accept it because that was the best we could get at the time. Forget this 'friends' business. Each company is trying to maximize their share price. If that means agreements, then they'll make them. If it means litigation or seeking political support to stop cdmaOne getting into Europe, fair enough. But I prefer a competitive approach, where Q! intends to simply beat all comers. Tero puts forwards the socialistic winning-over-new-Ericy-friends type approach and aren't we all happy divvying up the pie together and forming a cartel to set prices and generally carve up consumers with political friends protecting our niche, assocation, friendship and kleptocracy. Tero says 'alienating the power base' as though Nokia and Ericy have a 'power base'. This is incipient megalomania! Companies have customers, not a power base. Politicians and military have a power base. Sure they have intellectual property and that could be considered a power base. But alienating and defeating the GSM intellectual power base is just what we should be doing. The USA has competition built in, hence the Microsoft prosecution and anti-trust laws. While I disagree with prosecuting a competitor for being successful, I agree that competition is fine and cartels are bad [though I'd leave them to their own defeat rather than waste time with government action on cartels]. Mostly cartels only exist because of government legal protection - such as the medical cartel. Mqurice