The recent decision by the European Union to halt any investigation of Qualcomm Inc. on royalties for 4G patents carries a direct message for smartbook markets – and not just because many smartbooks will support Long Term Evolution and other modulation standards where Qualcomm retains patents. The Nov. 24 article on the investigation in The Inquirer states that Texas Instruments Inc., Broadcom Corp., Nokia, NEC, Panasonic, and L.M. Ericsson all withdrew complaints against Qualcomm after reaching new settlements on patent use.
To some pundits in the legal arena, this would simply suggest out-of-court negotiations carried on under the threat of government inquiries. But something else has happened since the era when Qualcomm developed its own handsets. Since the new Qualcomm is defined by its chip architectures, the company no longer tries to establish absolute dominance in Code Division Multiple Access, nor suggest that adherence to CDMA air interfaces is a national security issue.
We can see the results in more recent pacts on patent sharing, such as the Qualcomm/Samsung deal. We can see it in the comments of Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellini at the Intel Developer Forum, who said he was as interested in the cooperative part of a relationship with Qualcomm, as he was in the direct competition involved in defining the spaces for netbook and smartbook architectures.
Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs has established a new culture that represents a preferred mode for doing business in 4G telephony, smartbooks, MediaFLO mobile broadcast, BREW software development, and additional markets the company is examining. It’s the kind of model Novell founder Ray Noorda used to call “coopetition.” It by no means assures Qualcomm an absence of future lawsuits on intellectual property – in fact, such lawsuits are a regular part of the landscape when holding a strong position in a given technology field. But Qualcomm’s current corporate strategy of trying harder to seek alliances makes a lot more sense than attempting to carve out a protected space in a wireless air interface.
Loring
