US Prez upholds Qualcomm chip ban, Verizon snickers

Qualcomm -- a company that's arguably more used to suing than being sued -- isn't finding much luck in its protracted quest to avoid a Broadcom-led ban of its 3G hardware from coming into the States. Following a recent denial of its motion to stay the ban in the court system, the President of The United States himself (or his administration, anyway) has swooped in to render an executive judgment, and it ain't looking any better for Qualcomm. Saying that the importance of protecting IP rights outweighs the inconvenience of the ban, the Bush folks have stood by the ITC's decision to impose the ban in the first place, making it seem all that much smarter now for Verizon to have sidestepped the whole ordeal and paid Broadcom itself. Barring any last minute antics, the ban gets enforced starting tomorrow.

[Totalfixation @ Aug 6th 2007 6:57PM]

"that" should be "than" being sued?

[Chris Ziegler @ Aug 6th 2007 7:04PM]

Fixed - thanks!

Chris

[b-rad @ Aug 6th 2007 7:03PM]

So this means what for consumers?

[Mystic Alpaca @ Aug 6th 2007 7:08PM]

It means "all your radio are belong to us"

[strider_mt2k @ Aug 6th 2007 7:15PM]

HOLD IT!

[Clint @ Aug 6th 2007 7:37PM]

I have no problem with this as long as Broadcom made some chips itself that the manufacturers could buy, but they make no CDMA chips. I think they should have just forced Qualcomm to pay up so us customers didn't suffer.

[Yojimbo @ Aug 6th 2007 7:52PM]

So much for our system of governmental checks, balances, and separation of power... Executive encroaching on the Judicial playing field? Bad form Bush, bad form old boy! (but should we expect anything less?).

[Matthew @ Aug 6th 2007 11:20PM]

You really have no clue do you...try informing yourself on the subject of why the President was involved in the first place before somehow trying to indicate this has anything to do separation of powers.

[ScOObyDoo @ Aug 6th 2007 8:14PM]

This is bad news for HTC, and I bet it's gonna hurt the introduction of the Kaiser in the US :(

[Joe @ Aug 6th 2007 8:19PM]

Yojimbo - RTFA - I dislike Bush more than the average citizen, but in this case he didn't take action, if he chose to reverse the ban he would have nullified the decisions by the courts and the ITC. Qualcomm (and other representative groups) were pressuring the administration to overrule the decision of the courts and the administration did not. This is more of an indictment of our utterly broken patent system where a simple allegation of patent infringement is enough to shut down a business.

[Yojimbo @ Aug 6th 2007 11:31PM]

Good point... I WOULD have read it... however I was banned from doing so by an Executive Order.

[apeguero @ Aug 6th 2007 8:43PM]

I never thought I'd be saying this but Bush is a moron! Guess I'll have to keep hacking the hell out of my 8525 until something better comes my way. I somehow suspect the 8525 will be like the Treo 650 if this keeps up or at least until someone else comes out with a better 3G chip that doesn't piss off Broadcom.

[Joey Geraci @ Aug 6th 2007 11:32PM]

Are there any specific handsets that would become unavailable as soon as the supplies in current warehouses ran out, or is this decision not going to affect normal consumers anytime soon?

I have to say I can't blame the Bush Administration too much for this particular decision, as they would have been exerting a pretty enormous amount of power if they had intervened. (Yes, yes BIICIS (Bush Is Incompetent and Cheney Is Evil, but come on, we should congratulate these guys for exercising restraint for once)

[Frankenstein Black @ Aug 6th 2007 11:48PM]

This primarily impacts CDMA 2000 3G devices (i.e. Verizon and Sprint). Verizon puled a nice move however to avoid issues. Sprint however, better hurry up and close that deal with SKT to access all of those cool handsets they have over there...

[Frankenstein Black @ Aug 6th 2007 11:56PM]

This primarily impacts CDMA 2000 3G devices (i.e. Verizon and Sprint). Verizon puled a nice move however to avoid issues. Sprint however, better hurry up and close that deal with SKT to access all of those cool handsets they have over there...

[Frankenstein Black @ Aug 7th 2007 12:00AM]

Woops! :^(...

[siddharth s @ Aug 7th 2007 2:12AM]

That's a good thing. This has nothing to do with the other countless "obvious" patent disputes. Here Qualcomm had knowingly and willfully infringed upon Broadcom's patents. The willfullness has been proven in court and is a main reason this case is holding up (note, I'm not a lawyer).

FYI, Broadcom has exempt non-commercial and emergency/law enforcement groups from this ban. Meaning those groups are allowed to get in the chips. This gesture is done by Broadcom, on their own. Not by ITC, not by the President of the USA.

Qualcomm is just quite surprised someone actually is speaking against Qualcomm's own monopolistic policies in the CDMA market. They're just not used to an open, free market so negotiating any settlement with Broadcom is something they can't digest. Even if that means Qualcomm behavior ends up screwing over Qualcomm's own customers (i.e. Verizon).

For those who have seen something like this unfold a few years back, yes, Qualcomm is the Rambus of the cellular space. Another example in WiMax (802.15.3a). Qualcomm has, ahem, BRIBED several engineers from other companies, to mess up the voting process used in formulating the open standard. Why? Just to set the stage for Qualcomm's proprietary solution to step up. Then swoop in and collect royalties from everyone. Sheesh!!

More info at http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189600771

[Rich @ Aug 7th 2007 5:31AM]

That's a great summary of Qualcomm's monopolistic attitude to business. It's very bad for consumers as it leads to less competition, less innovation and higher prices.

Another example: Qualcomm own the patents to CDMA2000 technology and they also make CDMA2000 chipsets. If a phone manufacturer wants to make CDMA2000 devices, they either need to license the patents or buy the chipset from Qualcomm.

Large manufacturers like Nokia can produce cheap phones because they develop their own chipsets. They see economies of scale from this and can pass the savings onto the customer (they don't have much choice in such a competitive market).

However, Qualcomm do everything they can to discourage device manufacturers from producing their own CDMA2000 chipsets. They charge Nokia the same license fee for their CDMA2000 patents as they do for the entire chipset, making Nokia's CDMA phones uncompetitive.

This is one of the main reasons why companies like Nokia and Sony Ericsson don't produce CDMA2000 phones any more. This is a great shame because it means you'll never see a Nokia N95 or Sony Ericsson K800i for Verizon or Sprint.