Huawei to seek more mobile phone patents
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(InfoWorld) - Huawei Technologies Co. plans to increase its investments in research and development to expand its patent portfolio for mobile phone technologies, making it less dependent on intellectual property from other manufacturers, a senior executive said Tuesday. Huawei owns only about 5 percent of the intellectual property rights for components used in its handsets, Senior Vice President Guo Ping said Tuesday during a news conference at the Telecom World conference and exhibition in Hong Kong Huawei is best known outside of Asia for its networking equipment, but it also supplies handsets to more than 70 operators around the world. While the company recognizes the intellectual property rights of others, it also sees a need to have to have a larger patent portfolio of its own, according to Ping. Patents are a valuable commodity in high tech industries. Companies with fewer patents often have to pay more to use technologies developed by others in their products. Huawei could potentially benefit from the Chinese government's support of TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access ), aÂ homegrown 3GÂ technology. Many of the technology's core intellectual property rights are owned by Chinese companies. Ping declined to comment on theÂ ongoing feud over patent royalty paymentsÂ between QualcommÂ and Nokia. The Finnish mobile phone maker, which has been unable to work around Qualcomm's CDMA patents for its own third-generation WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) handsets, has been trying to pressure the U.S. company into agreeing to a cap on royalties in 3G phones. At a separate press conference on Tuesday in Hong Kong, Qualcomm Chief Executive OfficerÂ Paul Jacobs said the company continues to negotiate, but that the talks are not progressing far. "Ideally, we would like to see if we can get a win-win situation for both companies but this will be very difficult," he said. "But both companies have a history of competing vigorously." Telecom World, which is organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency, runs through Friday.
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Nokia, the world&#39;s largest maker of mobile phones, plans to bring 40 new handsets to the market in 2005 as it seeks to expand its already dominant market share in the face of increased competition from rivals Motorola, Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson
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TORONTO -- Research In Motion Ltd. is suing Motorola Inc. over several patents used for wireless devices such as RIM's BlackBerry e-mail devices and Motorola's Razr smart phones.
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"This is another example where Qualcomm has effectively copied Nokia's innovations."  Nokia Corp., the world's largest mobile phone maker, said Monday it filed a patent infringement countersuit against Qualcomm in an ongoing multinational legal battle over wireless technology.Nokia, which filed the lawsuit in a Texas district court, is seeking damages and injunctive relief. The lawsuit deals with claims of unauthorized use of Nokia's Brew and MediaFlo patents, which allow fast, high-quality transfers of audio and video multimedia to wireless subscribers.In April, Qualcomm Inc., the world's No. 2 chipmaker for mobile phones which licenses its technology patents, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Texas against Nokia, allegedly involving certain types of mobile software download and execution environments. Read more
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Research In Motion Ltd. is suing Motorola Inc. over several patents used for wireless devices such as RIM's BlackBerry e-mail devices and Motorola's Razr smart phones.
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With PDA sales slumping, company is planning new devices.
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China's largest telecoms equipment firm, ZTE, plans to expand globally by targeting the markets of Africa and India.
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Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp said on Monday it is seeking to build third-generation (3G) mobile phone infrastructure in China in a bid to gain a foothold in the world&#39;s biggest mobile phone market.
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Huawei Technologies, China&#39;s leading telecommunications equipment maker, will build a third-generation network for Telfort, the Dutch mobile operator, its first such contract in Europe.
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Increasing competition from Apple and Research in Motion will prompt the cellphone maker to ramp up on research.
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The companies want to create more consistent platforms that can be used with any handset.
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(InfoWorld) - Ongoing legal disputes over mobile phone patents between Nokia and Qualcomm are consuming much executive management time, generating substantial lawyer fees, and, if they escalate, could affect handset development and prices, experts warn. Defending IP (intellectual-property) rights through litigation "is the nature of the business," said Chris Jones, senior analyst with Canalys.com in Reading, England. "But in the case of Nokia and Qualcomm, unfortunately, it's been taking up too much management time." On Monday, Nokia responded to a patent lawsuit filed by Qualcomm in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas by filing a counterclaim against the U.S. company. Over the past two years, Qualcomm has filed 11 lawsuits against Nokia, according to a Nokia spokeswoman. The initial Qualcomm lawsuit filed in Texas deals with three patents related to the downloading of applications and other digital content over GPRSÂ or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks, two technologies for speeding the transmission of packet data in GSM networks. Nokia contends that Qualcomm's patents are invalid and, in addition, has asked the Texas court to stop Qualcomm from using six Nokia implementation patents used in Qualcomm's MediaFlow and Brew technologies. Standards bodies divide patents touching the technologies they define into two categories: Those essential to a standards-compliant product, and those that only cover a particular implementation of the standard. This is the second counterclaim filed by the Finnish manufacturer. On April 2, Nokia filed a counterclaim in the U.S. Western District of Wisconsin, accusing Qualcomm of infringing on six of its patents relating primarily to multiband and multimode technologies that reduce handset and chipset size, cost, and power consumption. The counterclaim came in response to Qualcomm's initial lawsuit filed in the same court over two patents covering speech encoders used in certain GSM phones to digitize audio signals for transmission. So far, the patent infringement lawsuits against Nokia "haven't taken the vendor's eye off the ball when it comes to developing and bringing handsets to market," Jones said but warned of "too much management time being focused on these litigation cases." Nokia is in "close discussions" with its partners and customers to keep them informed of how the company is dealing with litigation, the spokeswoman said. "Our view is that they respect our right to protect our patents and our business, and to take the action we need to take," she said. Andrew Gilbert, president of Qualcomm Europe, argues that the company's licensing model has created greater competition in the market by allowing vendors without GSM patents to enter the market and compete more easily. The model, known as "pass through rights," lets manufacturers obtain the rights to use numerous GSM patents already licensed by Qualcomm -- in addition to the company's own CDMA patents -- instead of having to strike separate royalty deals with each GSM patent holder. "We think our model drives down prices of royalties and thus the price of handsets," he said. But Gilbert conceded that the current litigation is a cost factor. "Clearly, we'd rather be spending the couple of hundred million dollars on innovation," he said. That sum could easily rise as the chronology of the legal battles between Qualcomm and Nokia suggests: On Oct. 28, 2005, Nokia and five other companies, including Broadcom and Telefonaktiebolaget Ericsson, filed a complaint to the European Commission over Qualcomm's high royalty rates, among other issues. The Commission has yet to make a decision. On Nov. 4, 2005,Â Qualcomm filed a lawsuit against NokiaÂ in the federal court of San Diego, California, over GSM patents. The court put the case on hold, pending further information. On May 24, 2006,Â Qualcomm filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nokia in the U.K.Â over two GSM patents. The trial is expected later this year. On June 9, 2006, Qualcomm filed a complaint against Nokia with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) over six GSM patents. The company later withdrew three, and the ITC has meanwhile put the case on hold. On Aug. 9, 2006, Qualcomm filed a GSM patent infringement lawsuit against Nokia in Germany. The trial is set for September. On the same day,Â Nokia filed a case in Delaware, claiming that Qualcomm breached its written contractual obligations to license essential GSM and 3G (third-generation) patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. On Oct. 4, 2006, Qualcomm filed a patent infringement lawsuits against Nokia in France and on Oct. 16 in Italy over GSM technologies. On Feb. 2, 2007, Qualcomm filed three complaints in China over GSM patents. On March 19, Nokia filed complaints against Qualcomm patents in Germany and the Netherlands. On April 2, Qualcomm filed the two cases against Nokia in Wisconsin an Texas. And on May 24,Â Nokia filed a counter-claim against QualcommÂ in response to the lawsuit filed in Wisconsin.
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Global mobile phone makers including Taiwan&#39;s High Tech Computer Corp. are already testing new processors from Qualcomm Inc. with which the chip manufacturer hopes to challenge Intel Corp. in the market for ultramobile PCs and mobile devices.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), of Hsinchu, Taiwan, has expanded its patent-infringement fight against rival contract chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.
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China&#39;s largest telecoms equipment maker, Huawei Technologies, clinched its first European contract for a third-generation mobile network yesterday, underlining its threat to bigger international rivals.
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(InfoWorld) - The rancorous world of wireless is heating up yet again, with two subsidiaries of Motorola suing Aruba Networks, alleging the wireless LAN company infringed four patents. Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley CommunicationsÂ charge that Aruba is knowingly using their patented WLAN switch technologies and techniques for designing and managing WLANs. On Monday, they filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. The companies want a jury trial and are seeking a permanent injunction against Aruba as well as unspecified monetary damages, tripled because of willful infringement. The airwaves have become a dangerous place to do business, with a series of suits between Qualcomm and two of its mobile rivals,Â NokiaÂ andÂ Broadcom, following on the heels ofÂ NTP's litigation against Research In MotionÂ andÂ other companies. An Australian research body won an injunction against Buffalo Technology (USA)Â for WLAN patent infringement, and the development of the hotly anticipated IEEE 802.11n WLAN specification has also sparked fierce battles, though not in court. As in other fast-growing markets, litigants may see future riches at stake. Aruba makes a variety of WLAN equipment and technology for putting the gear together in large networks for enterprises and other customers. The company, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is incorporated in Delaware, according to the suit. Aruba has not yet seen the suit and has no comment, spokesman Michael Tennefoss said. All of Aruba's WLAN switch, site planning, and radio-frequency management and monitoring products infringe the patents, and they have since the company began selling its first products, said Aaron Bernstein, vice president and deputy general counsel at Symbol. The companies don't want to license the technology to Aruba, but to stop the company from using it, he said. Motorola isn't suing Aruba because the patents were issued to Symbol and Wireless Valley, which are separate legal entities wholly owned by Motorola. Wireless Valley was acquired in 2005 and Symbol earlier this year. They didn't sue Aruba until now because the WLAN switch patents weren't awarded to Symbol until early this year, Bernstein said.
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Motorola Inc. , the world's  second-biggest handset maker, said on Monday it would develop  advanced mobile phones using chips from Texas Instruments Inc.  , the No. 1 wireless chip maker.