Posts Tagged: "4G"

On February 13, global policymakers and technology company representatives gathered in Washington, D.C. at Google’s offices for the Women’s High-Tech Coalition (WHTC) Third Annual “Women of Wireless” dialogue. The speakers represented companies including Google, Verizon, and Qualcomm, as well as major industry organizations such as the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), and discussed the various infrastructure, policy, and privacy challenges facing the industry in the race to 5G-implementation. With a record number of women elected to the 116th Session of the U.S. Congress and recent White House Executive Orders on technology issues— including this month’s “Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence (AI),” an expected executive order on 5G technology, and likely Congressional briefings and hearings focused on wireless innovation—the WHTC is an integral network of stakeholders to discuss these issues and to develop opportunities for strategic partnerships and shared initiatives.

Qualcomm was not refusing to abide by its agreed to promises to license SEPs as required by the SSOs, as alleged by the FTC. Instead, Qualcomm wasn’t interested in licensing competing chip makers who wanted to used Qualcomm’s technology so they could make their own chips incorporating Qualcomm’s patented technology. Licensing competing manufacturers of chips is not what the IP policies of the SSOs require. What is required is that patent owners of SEPs not discriminate against applicants desiring to utilize the license for the purpose of implementing the technology. But that isn’t what a competing manufacture would be doing. A competing manufacturer would be creating the chip that enables, not implementing the technology into an end product. In fact, as Qualcomm pointed out, industry practice of SSOs is to require licensing only fully compliant end-user devices, and not components.

An administrative law judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission recently found patent infringement in Qualcomm’s case against Apple, but then inexplicably refused to recommend that the commission issue an exclusion order against infringer Apple. Is there some new standard that “established and profitable companies” are no longer deserving of ITC action?  The International Trade Commission is in danger of causing the same harm to patent rights as the U.S. Supreme Court has inflicted on patent owners with the court’s lame-brained eBay decision.

On Tuesday, September 4th, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., et. al., vacating and remanding a grant of summary judgment entered by the district court finding the defendants in the case didn’t infringe a patent asserted by Intellectual Ventures. The Federal Circuit panel of Chief Judge Sharon Prost and Circuit Judges Kimberly Moore and Jimmie Reyna found that the district court had erred in its claim construction leading up to the grant of summary judgment in the case.

Thursday, September 6th, marks the 24th anniversary of the issue of a seminal patent in the field of MIMO wireless communications. Its inventor, Dr. Arogyaswami Paulraj, is a member of the 2018 class of inductees into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Today, we return to our Evolution of Technology series to explore the story of how this inventor took advantage of his own academic skills to come to the United States and pioneer this major advance in wireless communications.

On August 1st, a jury verdict entered in the Southern District of California awarded $145.1 million in reasonable royalty damages to Canadian IP licensing firm Wi-LAN in a patent infringement case against Cupertino, CA-based consumer device giant Apple Inc. The jury determined that Apple infringed upon claims of two patents owned by Wi-LAN.

A major legal battle over patented technologies in the mobile device communication sector between San Diego, CA-based semiconductor developer Qualcomm Inc. and Cupertino, CA-based consumer tech giant Apple Inc. took a new turn as multiple news reports indicated that Qualcomm had filed suit in China seeking a ban on the sale and manufacture of iPhones. Qualcomm’s court filing in China is the latest salvo in a barrage of legal challenges between both company’s over licensing activities between Qualcomm, Apple and the many Asian contract manufacturers who fabricate smartphones for Apple which incorporate technologies allegedly covered by Qualcomm’s patents.

On Monday, October 9th, San Diego, CA-based fabless semiconductor developer Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) announced that it had entered into a licensing agreement with Istanbul, Turkey-based General Mobile, a regional smartphone brand and a partner of the Android One smartphone project developed by Google. The royalty-bearing patent license grants General Mobile the right to develop, manufacture and sell 3G and 4G complete devices which incorporate technologies that are covered by patents in Qualcomm’s portfolio.

5G is expected to generate even higher revenues from applications and services due to explosion on mobile application and services because of broadband-like speed, which are crucial for some of the emerging technologies like IoT, Wearables and Virtual/Augmented Reality. Revenues for 5G services will exceed $65 billion by 2025, according to a forecast from Juniper Research… The number of patents and key underlying technologies for 5G mobile networks will evolve significantly within next 5 years. However, early analysis shows that Qualcomm will still be the IP leader but may be not as dominant as in 4G-LTE. The device makers like Apple, Samsung, and Lenovo are also working on 5G IP development in order to minimize IP licensing costs.

The nature of broadband has been changing in a way that Wheeler believes will spur even more robust data services in the near future. The FCC is taking a number of steps to try and promote competition among broadband service providers, one of the most highly anticipated of which is the incentive auction of broadcast television airwave spectrum which is currently scheduled for the first quarter of 2016. The auction is an attempt to purchase spectrum from TV broadcasters so that it can be resold in a later auction to wireless service providers.