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

To: Clarksterh who wrote (23710)	3/3/1999 6:03:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 152472

From Yahoo> I'm slowing this thing down damit! by: HereComesDeJudge 15457 of 15462 Qualcomm vs. Ericsson delayed again Case to start in early June By Mike Drummond STAFF WRITER March 3, 1999 A mountain of paperwork has delayed a long-awaited court battle between Qualcomm and Swedish rival L.M. Ericsson until early June, marking the third time the case has been sidelined. The case initially was to start in December in Marshall, Texas, only to be reset for February and then again for April 6. While this latest postponement gives the two sides more time to negotiate, the delay also endangers an international body's timetable to create a global technical standard for future generations of wireless technology. U.S. District Judge David Folsom said yesterday that "the briefing schedule of various actions pending" forced him to set back the trial date. Qualcomm officials declined comment. Ericsson vice president of communications Kathy Egan said the delay "allows us to negotiate instead of litigate." The two sides have been talking, and ranking executives from both companies recently predicted they will reach a settlement out of court. So many Ericsson officials have been seen walking Qualcomm's Sorrento Valley campus that some local employees were convinced the Swedish company was poised to make an acquisition. Qualcomm officials laugh off the suggestion that the company is for sale. Ericsson filed its lawsuit against Qualcomm in 1995, claiming patent infringement. Qualcomm countersued, seeking damages from Ericsson for making disparaging comments about Qualcomm's technology. Qualcomm was the first to commercially develop code division multiple access or CDMA, a digital wireless technology used primarily in the United States and Korea. Ericsson is a leader in global system for mobile communications or GSM, the world's dominant wireless technology used throughout Europe and Asia. Both companies now want the world to adopt their new breeds of CDMA for so-called third generation or 3G wireless phones, which will be more capable of e-mailing, Web surfing and downloading bigger digital files. Qualcomm is pushing its upcoming CDMA 2000, while Ericsson -- having once derided CDMA as impractical -- is advancing its wideband CDMA. Neither system is compatible with the other and neither has been deployed. Qualcomm says it's entitled to royalties for W-CDMA, a derivative of GSM. "Hey, we built (CDMA)" Jeffrey Belk, Qualcomm's vice president of marketing, recently said. Governments and the world's major telecommunications carriers desperately want a single standard or at least a family of technical standards that would give 3G phones a global reach, so that the same phone in Los Angeles, for example, could be used in Liechtenstein. A single standard would lower costs of development and manufacturing. The International Telecommunications Union is supposed to submit a draft of technical 3G specifications by the end of this month, with a final proposal by year's end. But the dispute over intellectual property rights has been a fly in the ointment. "The ITU wants these issues cleaned up so it can move on," said Wojtek Uzdelewicz, an analyst with SG Cowen & Co. "This could delay international standards. "This frustrates everyone," he added. "But there's not much you can do." Copyright 1999 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.