Replies to post #31710 on InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[2112]

Mickey, with all due respect, that was then and this is now. Back then Idcc may not have looked like a good investment and anyone investing took significant risk (although I wish I bought at some of those prices.) On a going forward basis, it is very much a good investment and mgmt must be judged on that fact and that fact alone. Let bygones be bygones.

Generally, I know you are one of the ultimate longs in idcc....take the good w/the bad and you'll sleep better.

[blueskywaves]

The key difference, Mickey, is that you and your friends have done nothing to increase the commercial value of IDCC's patent portfolio.

Zip. Zilch. Nada. Zero.

Would you have had the wit to increase R&D by $210M after the Motorola loss in order to increase the number of US Patents from 65 in 1995 to 240 in 2002?

I don't think so. The numbers clearly show that the market value of IDCC's patents increased as it continued to invest heavily in the foundation of IDCC's early TDMA and CDMA patents to build a patent portfolio that is now applicable to all five 3G standards -- based on TDMA, TDMA/CDMA and CDMA -- with every conceivable turn of process geometry.

Wideband CDMA, for example, was just not feasible in the mid-90s because the semiconductor processes were not sophisticated enough to create right kind of processing power for wireless handsets. That's one of the reasons why QCOM chose narrowband CDMA which had lower processing requirements and why IDCC, Siemens, Samsung and Alcatel decided to collaborate on a fixed wireless version of wideband CDMA -- the BCDMA alliance.

By the way, do you know when IDCC's earliest TDMA and CDMA are set to expire and become part of the public domain? If you do then you can understand why IDCC needs to continue to spend heavily in R&D while using its growing cash reserves to opportunistically create new engines for growth.