Estoppel has nothing to do with the arbitration for the reason I've outlined below the italicised quote:
"There is something in the law called collateral estoppel. What this means is that if an issue was litigated by parties in a previous litigation and the interests of the parties were identical then that issue is estopped from being litigated again by a party with an identical interest of the losing party. So what might be happening here is that IDCC won the issue of their patent over the Ericsonn party in the prior case and now Nokia whose interest may be identical to Ericsonn's as to the validity of IDCC's patent. If so, the arbitration may simply be to determine the amount Nokia owes under the IDCC patent."
Nope, remember, IDCC settled with Ericsson, they didn't win their patent lawsuit. And because the settlement amount was so little for all those years of alleged infringement, it doesn't tell us that IDCC has a strong case for 2G infringement. The battle for 3G royalties is a separate task for IDCC, one that they are behind the curve on considering that 3G is rolling out as we speak and the number and size of IDCC's 3G license list is woefully small.
"That may be why it is in arbitration rather than in court. If they were contesting IDCC's patent rights I would think that would be in court. Since it is not, I thinkt the battle will be the amount owed, not wheter the patent rights are valid. That's just my opinion and I might be wrong!"
Yes, in this case you are wrong. The battle isn't even the amount owed, it's whether the Ericsson settlement triggers payment obligations under the contract IDCC has with Nokia. Nokia claims it does not and no payment is due. If you want to characterize that as "how much is due" then fine but Nokia is contending they don't have to pay anything to IDCC due to the Ericsson settlement. Whether the patents are valid might not even enter in to it.
Too bad we don't actually have access to the Nokia/IDCC agreement that management told us was a slam dunk but from what we can see I don't think it looks that good.
Once
The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.
~ ~ ~ Josh Billings
