Qualcomm has lost yet another legal case, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding a decision by a federal judge in
This makes the Qualcomm patents unenforceable. "Qualcomm intentionally organised a plan to shield its patents from consideration by the JVT intending to later obtain royalties from HS-264 (the JVT digital video compression standard) compliant products, " ruled the court.
U.S. District Court Judge Rudi Brewster found: "The eventual collapse of Qualcomm's concealment efforts exposes the carefully orchestrated plan and the deadly determination of Qualcomm to achieve its goal of holding hostage the entire industry desiring to practice the H.264 standard."
If Judge Brewster is right, then Qualcomm's attempt to gain control over the H.264 standard closely parallels Qualcomm's attempts to exercise control over the wireless industry with demands for an unconscionable level of royalties for CDMA licenses after agreeing to license them on fair and reasonable terms.
This led a leading analyst's comment: "You only get one chance to screw the industry," and to a resounding 'Not on your Nelly' from the industry when offered licenses to Qualcomm's 4G standard UMB.
The reason why Qualcomm loses so many of its legal cases seems to be because it is not just trying to compete in the markets it serves, it is trying to establish a legalistic hegemony over them, like the Wintel hegemony in PCs.
While this is may seem a heady aspiration to some people, you'd think that it must be crystal clear to the electronics industry globally that it must never allow a hegemony of the Wintel sort ever to get established again, in any industry sector.
The tragedy of this is that all the good that Qualcomm
have done (the work of Vitterbi et al on CDMA) is
being undone by this seemingly USA tactic (see also
Rambus) regarding IPR disclosure.
And worse, they are now in a form of "boy who cried
wolf" scenario for current/future technology.
MediaFLO may actually be (despite the economic
machinations of the EU etc) a better scheme than
DVB-H etc for mobile TV networks. UMB may come to be
a better approach to OFDM than that proposed for LTE.
But after what happened with W-CDMA, no one will
touch Qualcomm with the proverbial barge pole.
Tis one thing for techniques to be dismissed or
ignored because they are cogently shown not to be
fit for purpose. But quite something for those things
to be dismissed because a companys' lawyers are
shown to be patently (sic) not fit to practice.
You are 100 per cent right, Mo Yan, Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi are heroes. They are the Noyce and Moore of the wireless IC industry.
They succeeded in building Qualcomm in the teeth of the most virulent opposition from the US telecommunications establishement led by AT&T, they single-handedly developed CDMA, and they built a great chip company.
But then I think thery got this awful USA bug of wanting to control the entire worldwide wireless industry - like Intel and Microsoft controlling the worldwide PC industry, and Qualcomm started trying to establish a legal domination over the wireless industry through the law courts.
I think this was a non-starter because there are so many big wireless companies in the world which are not prepared to stand for it, and there are so many owners of wireless technology IP that it is unrealistic for one company to try and assert domination over wireless IP.
Nonetheless, and I don't know this, but I expect the Wall St analysts kept pushing Qualcomm into trying to leverage their position in CDMA to do a 'Wintel' on the wireless industry, not really understanding that the wireless industry is much more mature than the PC industry was in the 1980s when Wintel was able to achieve a legally-enforceable domination.
Also, of course, Qualcomm suffered the disadvantage of the world electronics industry having seen the effect of Wintel, and thereafter becoming determined it would never let anything similar happen ever again.
I worked on UMTS development in the early days (1999) ,
and Qualcomm suddenly experienced the 800lb gorilla
that is Ericsson (who coincidently are as equally
well-placed on IPR for 4G as they were for 3G) .
Thing got so bad that the ITU decreed that if
the silliness continued, W-CDMA would not be
approved as an official IMT-2000 std. Even if that
meant inferior technology was defined/mandated.
I can tell a similar story for TD-SCDMA (the China
3G std) .
Your comment on the Wall St aspect, may have some
part to play. But I suspect not even vaguely close to
the extent that this has happened with Rambus.
Regarding the "Wintel" aspect, IMHO industry could
probably have lived with that if the licencing "tax"
was not silly. For all its faults, Qualcomm does have
lean, innovative, top-notch product/IPR. They
are not bloatware feeding off the fruits of Moores'
law etc (unlike other companies one could mention) .
Very interesting indeed.
It always seemed risky to adopt a US standard simply because of the likelihood of abuse of the level of 'tax' imposed.
But we live and learn, and Qualcomm's behaviour has made it pretty unlikely that a US standard will be adopted in the foreseeable future.
As for Rambus I couldn't agree more. They seem to have a mad bunch of crazed investors hoping that the day will come when Rambus corners the DRAM market and their shares are worth $100, In the meantime they abuse anyone who suggests anything to the contrary!