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

To: Ingenious who wrote (23326)	2/24/1999 10:16:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Leland - Just to play the devil's advocate - this sounds like soft handoff. two base stations transmitting the same signal to a single handset as the handset travels closer to one base to a further away from the other. I certainly hope not from Ericsson's point of view. The reason is multifold (in order of Qualcomm strength): 1) Qualcomm has a prior patent (5101501) for soft handoff with both basestations 'concurrently' transmitting the same information. (Note that Ericsson uses the word 'simultaneously' meaning, as defined in another section of the patent, received by the mobile bit-for-bit at the same time. Their definition of simultaneous is a restricted version of Qualcomm's 'concurrent'. See item #2.) 2) Ericsson must be consistent with any terms that they use which do not mean what they ordinarily mean. They have restricted the meaning of 'simultaneous' and with this restricted definition it can be said that Qualcomm does not 'simultaneously' transmit two identical signals from different basestations. This is not word play or legalese - Ericsson means a particular thing when they say simultaneous, and CDMAOne does not fall into that. 3)Lets assume that, in direct contradiction to the patents, it is decided that Ericsson really means concurrent when it says simultaneous (and Qualcomm's patent wasn't first). The overlap between the two patents is only that - that the two basestations be transmitting the same information concurrently. It should be easy to show that this is hardly a novel concept (i.e. it's too broad and is almost certainly in the literature in many places.). 4) Much more subjectively, I think it extremely unlikely that anyone familiar with the art would say that Qualcomm's softhandoff 'read's on' Ericsson's patent. Some of the reasons for this are given above, but they are not the only ones. Clark

To: Ingenious who wrote (23326)	2/24/1999 12:34:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Respond to of 152472

Leland - A more succinct version of the argument against Ericsson's potential claim for softhandoff. Either: 1) Ericsson means the same thing by 'simultaneous' that Qualcomm does when they say 'concurrent'. In this case Qualcomm has a prior patent, and in any case this definition of simultaneous is broad enough that I strongly suspect that it is not adequately novel. OR 2) Ericsson means by simultaneous something that is much more restrictive than Qualcomm's concurrent (i.e. Ericsson's simultaneous means bit-by-bit identical time of reception). In this case Qualcomm does not using the technology since Rake Rx's don't care about bit-by-bit identical time reception. Clark PS I looked in more depth at the Ericsson patents at issue, and they are a little more unclear about what exactly they mean by simultaneous than I originally thought, but the point is that either way they are going to run into problems.