RSSJudge: Qualcomm Guilty of 'Litigation Misconduct and Concealment'
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 7, 2007, 6:27 PM
In a blistering rebuke of Qualcomm during its pursuit of patent infringement claims against rival Broadcom - whose counterclaims led to an import ban on some Qualcomm chips, signed into law by President Bush yesterday - US District Judge Rudi Brewster yesterday issued a finding which contained this quote: "The Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that Qualcomm counsel participated in an organized program of litigation misconduct and concealment throughout discovery, trial, and post-trial [prior to] April 27, 2007."
As a result of this finding, Qualcomm is now prohibited from being able to enforce two of its patents for video compression techniques, the existence of which the company failed to disclose before a key meeting of the Joint Video Task Force (JVT).
There, a multitude of industry leaders with a stake in H.264 compression and its implementation in devices, were invited to attend in order to disclose their intellectual property claims with regard to H.264. Qualcomm did in fact attend, although company representatives had testified under oath that they did not, due either to lack of knowledge or that Qualcomm wasn't a member of JVT.
The purpose of attending JVT meetings was for each member to let colleagues and other industry players know what IP rights it intends to claim, in order that all may avoid possible infringement in the future. By not claiming its IP at that time, Broadcom argued, Qualcomm forfeited its right to claim that same IP later in court.
Last March, Judge Brewster ruled against Qualcomm, removing its right to enforce those two patents. But today, he blew away any chance Qualcomm may have had to rebuild that bridge, opening the possibility for future criminal litigation misconduct proceedings against the company.
"The Court finds by clear and convincing evidence," Judge Brewster wrote, "that Qualcomm intentionally organized a plan of action to shield the '104 and '767 patents from consideration by the JVT with the anticipation that (1) the resulting H.264 standard would infringe those patents and (2) Qualcomm would then have the opportunity to become an indispensable licensor to anyone in the world seeking to produce H.264-compliant products."
The admonishment never ceases, for 54 straight pages including excerpts of Qualcomm representatives' sworn testimony, coupled with e-mails that suggest they were lying under oath. The result is a ruling that reduces Qualcomm from a giant in the communications field to a bully whom the principal has just pulled off the playground by his ears.
"The track of this conduct following the adoption of the H.264 standard exposes aggravated litigation abuse," Brewster continued. "This abuse commenced with Qualcomm's abrupt commencement of suit, then continued (1) in discovery through Qualcomm's constant stonewalling, concealment, and repeated misrepresentations concerning existing corporate documentary evidence that would have revealed the fullness of the corporate plan; and (2) in trial through Qualcomm's presentation of numerous witnesses who steadfastly testified falsely denying even awareness, let alone participation in the JVT project and through the actions of Qualcomm's lead and co-counsel up to the time Qualcomm substituted new lead counsel, who adamantly denied the obvious and then, when the truth was discovered and exposed by the document production, sequentially contended denial of relevance, justification, mistake, and finally non-awareness."
The evidence showed, the judge found, that Qualcomm knew of its duty to disclose the existence of its two video compression patents as early as 2002. Yet they did not come to light until April 2006, when Qualcomm chose to file infringement claims on those patents.
Next: "The falsity of Ms. Irvine's testimony is now revealed as blatant..."
This is another shameful example of just how corrupt and underhanded big business can become, and how bad some lawyers are.
Those lawyers give weasels and snakes a bad name!
To me, this is a prime example of a) corporate greed, b) patents are misused to beat people over the head legally, and c) how not having a unified open standard that doesn't belong to any one entity within an industry that provides such a widely used public service (cellphones,communication networks, etc), is a bad thing.
Let the companies all come together on standards, hammer out the ground rules and product specifications, and then fight out the real profit/innovation wars by producing competing products on those free open specs. OR, a wide body that collects royalties for technology and spreads it amongst those who contributed to the specs is ok too (like DVD Forum or similar "licensing" body), at least one company doesn't control everything.
IMHO, when you have a single company controlling a market like this, be it software, hardware, cell phones, radios, whatever, you have the atmosphere for someone to inhibit innovation, exert undue influence on the market, keeping costs high and things in a rut. It's the same as a monopoly to most people.
The author's right: We in the USA are constantly held hostage in markets by corporations who feel that they can leave an infrastructure in place, and milk it for all its worth. They won't adapt, change, or update themselves to keep up with the rest of the world. Instead, they'll let things get to the point of obsolescence and then try to justify jacking prices up when they are finally forced (through consumer pressure)to update and lay new infrastructure, when the updates have been more than paid for over the long term milking that the public has put up with. Maintenance doesn't take up all your profits, otherwise you wouldn't last long enough to even expand your operations.
Another great example of this is broadband access to the internet. I've been in 2 separate places in the last year where the cable company's definition of "blazing fast high-speed internet access" is a measly 1.5mbit down and 256k up. It's rediculous at this time to call that fast. People have 3G cellphones that are faster than my home internet connection! Places across the pond have 20, 30, and even 100mbit speeds directly to the house, with uncapped upstream!
Look around, folks, companies in general will not update their systems and provide better products and new services without pressure from the consumers.
Look at how long AT&T had a monopoly in the telephone handset market, and how it took a court decision just to allow people to have their *own* telephone devices instead of renting them from AT&T!
Something has to be done in Corporate America to change their mindset of "greed-milk-squeeze-bilk" and "procrastinate on evolving as long as we can". That something is the consumers have to really start massively voting with their shareholder stock and purchasing power.
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|All that are involved in this should be publicly beheaded.
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|I hope that the members of their legal team are not only disbarred, but also tried and convicted and placed in prison. The individuals who lied under oath should spend time in prison as well and perhaps even the heads of Qualcomm should be spending a few years behind bars as well.
Not only for punishment for their deplorable behavior, but also as a witness to other attorneys and companies to put them on notice that this type of behavior is no longer going to be allowed.
These people are a disgrace not only to corporations everywhere, but to Americans in general. They have allowed their greed to consume them at the detriment of all others.
I don't know how legal it is, but I'd confiscate all of their assets and sell everything off and use the proceeds to upgrade the infrastructure in this country - to make amends for what they have done.
Until we start punishing the criminals, they are going to continue to be criminals and others will do likewise because they will see that there is no real "punishment".
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|Sounds to me like Qualcomm is headed for the s***can..
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