Will Strauss at Forward Concepts makes an excellent point in his analysis of the Infineon acquisition of the LSI Logic wireless business that, thanks to LSI’s merger with Agere last year, the LSI mobile phone business had some 700 patents relating to UMTS technology plus many other patents owned by Agere as the heir to Bell Labs.
Strauss makes another telling point that it is thought that Agere had made a deal with Qualcomm under which Qualcomm waived its rights to royalties on future WCDMA/UMTS chips made by Agere in return for royalty-free use of the Agere/LSI patent portfolio.
The benefit of this agreement may, or may not, be transferred to Infineon.
Or, the issue whether it is transferred or not transferred to Infineon may be the subject of future negotiations, or even future law-suits, by Qualcomm.
That would be interesting seeing how abrasive and confrontational Qualcomm’s IPR dealing have been in the past.
With Qualcomm ruled out of supplying its chips to Nokia, the wireless chip market leader is looking to be on increasingly fragile ground.
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