Question..How do you reconcile the statement made by IDCC in their 10K ..with your analysis of their licensing page?Are you stating that in 1995 IDCC had all the ESSENTIAL patents for the 3G standards and they were granted to Qualcomm?.. What am I missing?TIA
What you say..
..Using Qualcomm as an example, they have sublicense rights to a certain fixed set of patents, correct? yes (with and without the sale of the ASIC too)
IDCC feels those patents are applicable to CDMA, CDMA2000, WCDMA and TD-SCDMA, correct? yes (per IDCC's licensing page showing standards licensed to Qualcomm).
What IDCC says..In their SEC filing..
The Qualcomm agreement excludes, among other things, any rights under our patents as regards TDMA standards, any rights under our patent applications filed after March 7, 1995, as well as any rights to any patents relating to cellular overlay and interference cancellation. Based on these limitations, the Siemens and the Qualcomm agreements do not provide a license under all the ITC patents or IPR Holdings Patents which we believe to be essential to 3G, including CDMA 2000, or all of the inventions which we believe will be essential and which are contained in pending patent applications. The Qualcomm license agreement grants Qualcomm the paid-up right to grant sub-licenses under designated ITC patent and patent applications to Qualcomm’s customers. For some of the ITC patents, Qualcomm’s sublicensing rights are limited to those situations where Qualcomm is selling ASICs to the customer. For a limited number of patents as to which applications were filed prior to March 8, 1995, Qualcomm may grant licenses under such ITC patents regardless of whether the customer is also purchasing an ASIC from Qualcomm.
