Similarly, all system equipment and test equipment suppliers are authorized to use Qualcomm's patents. Even chip manufacturers that directly compete with Qualcomm can get permission to use Qualcomm patents necessary to implement the standards. More than 135 companies have signed licensing agreements with Qualcomm to use Qualcomm patents. Licensing includes manufacturing and selling products using CDMA air interfaces (such as cdmaOne, CDMA2000, WCDMA and TD-SCDMA); For multimode CDMA/OFDM(A) products, Qualcomm acquired Flarion Technologies and strengthened the patent of OFDM(A). In addition, chip and software customers in Qualcomm also benefit from the third-party patents licensed by Qualcomm under the exhaustion doctrine principle. By August 2006, Qualcomm announced two licensees who used their patents for single-mode OFDMA user equipment and system equipment. Mobile phone manufacturers authorized by Qualcomm can produce and sell products in various ways.
1. They can buy chips and software directly from Qualcomm.
2. They can buy chips from authorized ASIC manufacturers in Qualcomm.
3. They can design and manufacture chip solutions by themselves.
In these three cases, authorized mobile phone manufacturers can use Qualcomm's patents on their products under a separate patent licensing agreement with Qualcomm. As shown in figure 3 below. The licensee who buys Qualcomm chips and software has the right to use other third-party patents, and does not need to pay additional patent fees according to the patent license exhaustion mechanism granted by the third party to Qualcomm; Through this mechanism, the third party grants Qualcomm the right to manufacture, use and sell its chips and software solutions. If an authorized handset manufacturer buys chips from an ASIC licensee in Qualcomm or manufactures chips by itself, if the chip supplier fails to provide the license for the use of the third-party patent, the authorized handset manufacturer needs to negotiate directly with the third-party patent holder on the license for the use of the third-party patent.
Qualcomm firmly believes that its licensing concept and method-backed by increasing R&D investment-can ensure the continuous development and progress of the whole industry in the competition. The decline in the price, the enhancement of functions and the greater sales of mobile phones are obviously reflected in the technical fields of CDMA2000 and WCDMA: chip suppliers, equipment manufacturers, network operators and end users will eventually benefit. Qualcomm has invested and will continue to invest a lot of energy and money from the beginning of the patent licensing program to obtain cross-licensing of its chips and software, so that customers can benefit without bearing additional patent fees. In some cases, Qualcomm will actively seek patents from other third parties to benefit licensees and end users, thus expanding the product applications and functions in WCDMA and CDMA2000 markets.
By ensuring these rights in the chips and software sold to customers, Qualcomm has reduced the possible burden of "patent accumulation"-the accumulated patent fees charged by multiple patent holders. For example, Qualcomm's patent licensing agreement under France Telecom's Turbo Code licensing program. According to the agreement, France Telecom authorized Qualcomm to use France Telecom's Turbo code patent in Qualcomm chip on a global scale. Turbo codes can achieve low signal-to-noise ratio with long information block length, thus greatly enhancing the functions of interference-limited systems, such as CDMA technology systems.
In addition, customers who buy Qualcomm chips can also get tested products, which are performance and functional interoperability tests related to CDMA2000 and WCDMA standards. According to customer requirements, the chip solution includes appropriate codecs and multimedia application software, such as video and music streaming. Customers in Qualcomm who buy chips can further reduce expenses, development costs and time to market. 1995, at that time, the only CDMA system deployment adopted the IS-95 standard (also known as cdmaOne). The cdmaOne phones used in these systems support voice function and data rate of 14 kbps. Now, the original cdmaOne equipment manufacturers are all producing multimode CDMA2000/GSM/GPRS and GSM/GPRS/WCDMA /HSDPA mobile phones, which have stronger voice functions and data rates of several megabytes. These devices use more patented technology from Qualcomm, but Qualcomm's patent licensors continue to pay the same patent rate. In addition, these new multimode mobile phones are much cheaper than the original cdmaOne mobile phone with more than 500 dollars, so the patent fee paid by each mobile phone is reduced proportionally.
In many cases, the licensee in Qualcomm chooses to reach such an agreement with Qualcomm, and through the "capture period" clause in the agreement, the licensee is granted the right to use Qualcomm's future core patents and non-core patents within a standard life cycle. This means that during the license agreement, the licensee who manufactures and sells single-mode or multimode CDMA products (such as using CDMA2000 or WCDMA alone or in combination with other technologies such as OFDMA or GSM) has the right to use all the core patents newly applied by Qualcomm.
Similarly, the licensee can usually use the newly applied non-core patent in Qualcomm before the end of the capture period. In most cases, Qualcomm's right to use these newly applied patents will not increase its global standard CDMA patent rate, no matter how groundbreaking or innovative these newly applied patents are. This arrangement is beneficial to both Qualcomm and the licensee. On the one hand, the licensee can obtain continuous technical improvement without paying extra patent fees. On the other hand, these improvements can provide more benefits for end users, thus stimulating more product sales. 2014 65438+1On October 23rd, the computer giant Hewlett-Packard announced that it had sold 2,400 mobile technology patents to Qualcomm, a wireless chip manufacturer. Hewlett-Packard did not disclose the specific financial terms of the patent acquisition transaction, but said that the technology patents sold included 65,438+0,400 US patents and patent applications, and another 65,438+0,000 patents and patent applications registered in other countries.
Among these 2400 patents, Palm, iPAQ, Bitphone and other patents related to mobile communication technology are included. These patents came from three companies acquired by HP in 2002, 2006 and 20 10, including Compaq, BitFone and Palm, which was acquired in cash of $6,543.80 billion.