"Nokia says Qualcomm never made a licensing offer, let alone one it could refuse"
QCOM made commitments to license its patents to others in as part of the agreement to standardize WCDMA and CDMA2000. This agreement surely applied to phones that combine GSM, GPRS or EDGE with CDMA. There is no evidence that it applied to GSM phones.
No one has asserted that QCOM's agreement covered pure GSM phones. Yet, NOK proceeded to use key QCOM patents to improve function and data rates on pure GSM phones used in US, Europe and developed countries. Knowing NOK, it is like them to be too arrogant to admit that they had to resort to the use of QCOM IP to make their phones work better. I think they would resist putting a "QCOM INSIDE" lable on the phone.
Then Broadcom's new Euro derived president precipitated a suit from QCOM to assert those patents as they applied to pure GSM phones. NOK watched QCOM take leadership in HSPDA development and small form factor WCDMA chips -- a terrifying indication of things to come. Then Nok got excited and found a group of sheep to run with it the the European Commission to attempt to force a reduction of QCOM's WCDMA royalty rate.
I don't believe that US patent law requires you to license your patents to a particular party that demands you do so. It may not require QCOM to license its patents to GSM phone maker NOK. Why should QCOM do this. Perhaps QCOM just doesn't want to set the precident of placing a value on one or two of its patents. Why be cherry picked or ever go down that road. The answer is that they don't want to do this and they don't appreciate NOK's effort to change the deal when its current agreement expires in 2007.
Perhaps NOK will be pressured to decide to re-up its agreement right now rather than wait until 2007 (and to include HSPDA).
NOK's problem is not paying the 5% to QCOM. Their problem is funding a R&D/manufacturing combine that executes so well that it leaves NOK in the dust and speeds up product life cycles to a pace that NOK can't deal with. Asside from creating earthquakes, fires, tornadoes in the area north of San Diego, their only cover for failure to perform/compete is to try to cut off the money flow to the QCOM research/development.mfg combine and associated value chain. With QCOM's improved ability in FLASH OFDM, NOK can see that it may face QCOM's ability to better execute for years to come. Like it is with compound interest, the company that executes best outpaces the others a little more each year until, ultimadely, it becomes clear to all just who supplies the better solutions.
Now operators are seeing that QCOM can give them the form factors, user interfaces, price points, software, and media flow ideas that will drive their ARPU up in the years to come.
If the European operators turn on the Euronut phone building monopolists then they are sunk. Surely those operators, after being bled to death by the WCDMA debucle, are aware that NOK has a performance gap that costs them dearly.
QCOM has put together a value chain that shares the wealth and induces the best minds to buy into that value chain because they caqn get well paid for excellent and successful efforts.
AI
