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| Wednesday, 13 June 2007 | |
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The telecom business in all its fixed and mobile and Internet variants would do well to remember that it is at heart a ‘utility’ rather than a playpen for the delinquents of the legal profession. Am I wrong? So sue me… I work here, I am supposed to understand this, yet I give up. Qualcomm is suing Nokia and Broadcom is suing Qualcomm and Broadcom may/may not be suing Qualcomm and Nokia. And Nokia is suing Qualcomm and may have a legal eagle's eye on Broadcom, too. Result? Almost an impasse with some processes working in reverse. The International Trade Commission (in whose name the word ‘International’ is about as apposite as the word ‘World’ in World Series baseball) has now stamped on the pesky foreigners. It would be easy to ridicule the ITC. But why should I bother? They do it for themselves! Consider the latest ‘remedy’, as applied to Qualcomm vs. Broadcom, announced on 07 June: “The chips and chipsets at issue are used in handheld wireless communications devices, including cellular telephone handsets, that are capable of operating on so-called third-generation ("3G") cellular telephone networks, i.e., EV-DO ("Evolution-Data Optimized") and WCDMA ("Wideband Code Division Multiple Access") networks such as those operated by Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T.” “The Commission previously determined that certain Qualcomm chips and chipsets were imported in violation of U.S. law because they infringe a U.S. patent held by Broadcom; the patent relates to mobile device capabilities and power management. Under section 337, which is designed to protect and enforce U.S. intellectual property rights, the Commission must determine the appropriate remedy to address this violation.” “The Commission is issuing a limited exclusion order that bars the importation of Qualcomm's infringing chips and chipsets and circuit board modules or carriers containing them. In addition, the exclusion order bars the importation of certain handheld wireless communications devices, such as cellular telephone handsets and personal digital assistants ("PDAs"), that contain Qualcomm's infringing chips and chipsets. The exclusion order does not apply to handheld wireless communications devices that are of the same models as handheld wireless communications devices that were being imported for sale to the general public on or before the date of the order, June 7, 2007. However, the order does bar the importation of new models of handheld wireless communications devices that contain Qualcomm's infringing chips and chipsets. Thus, the order "grandfathers" models of handheld wireless communications devices being imported into the United States for sale to the general public on or before June 7, 2007.” “The Commission is also issuing a cease and desist order that prevents Qualcomm from engaging in certain activities within the United States related to the infringing chips.” I don’t like reading this sort of muck any more than you do but, amazingly, the result of this legalese from the ITC is that key Qualcomm customers such as Samsung, LG and (think this one through) Motorola can no longer import new handsets with Qualcomm chips inside into the US. Prime beneficiary of this retardation in handset development for the US market will be Nokia. Go figure. And reading back over the paragrpahs above you realise just how wireless these Americans jurists can be. The term “so-called third-generation (“3G”) cellular telephone networks” just makes you laugh; talk of “infringing chips” makes you weep. Presumably mobile phones will be ripped apart and the offending chips sent to Guantanamo Bay, never to be seen again. George W. Bush once famously, although sadly it seems only apocryphally, pronounced that the French did not have a word for ‘entrepreneur’. Now it seems like the United States, despite years spent on these and other disputes, have no word for ‘arbitration’. In US technology circles that translates as ‘paydirt’. By God, the lawyers have hit it. Jim Chalmers |
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