Farewell to Qualcomm "Umbrella", manufacturers have different attitudes

A person familiar with the matter told the first financial daily that the national Development and Reform Commission has completed a year of antitrust investigations into the US chipmaker Qualcomm, which will be released shortly. "In addition to fines, lower licensing costs, the abolition of Qualcomm's implementation of the ' Anti-licensing agreement ' is in it." "The source said.

The "Anti-licensing agreement" is the use of Qualcomm's own patent advantage to force the handset manufacturers to sign the unfair contract, under the agreement, the use of Qualcomm Chip mobile phone companies, must be licensed to pass the patent to Qualcomm, and the patent should not be a patent fee for any of Qualcomm's customers. With the cancellation of the deal, the likelihood that domestic handset makers will take up patents as a weapon of contention would be greatly increased.

"However, even if the NDRC's sanctions against Qualcomm have abolished the antitrust and overturned the barriers by patenting mainland manufacturers, this does not mean that the patent war will come immediately." Yanhui, China's secretary of the mobile phone, told reporters yesterday that it could only be said that a patent manufacturer had the right to sue other manufacturers, but that the prosecution was more like a deterrent because of the weaker penalties for IPR infringement in the mainland.

Farewell to Qualcomm's "umbrella"

Qualcomm's monopoly case in China, which affects the domestic handset industry, is nearing its end. The people familiar with the matter told reporters that the results of the Qualcomm case had been announced, pending approval.

Last December 13, the NDRC conducted an antitrust investigation on Qualcomm, and a clear survey of Qualcomm in July this year included seven items such as "the basis for calculating the license fee for the whole machine".

As the investigation deepened, on some issues, Qualcomm promised to make rectification and requested the NDRC to suspend its antitrust investigation. A few months ago, NDRC officials revealed that the "Qualcomm antitrust case" has entered the final penalty stage. The industry has speculated that a fine of more than $1 billion trillion creates new records and Qualcomm may agree to substantially adjust its patent licensing model.

In the fourth quarter of 2014, the year's earnings were $6.69 billion trillion, down 2% from the previous quarter, with operating profits down 4% from the previous quarter, net profit down 15% and earnings per share falling 15%. Qualcomm tumbled in the fourth quarter, mainly because of antitrust investigations, with the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission investigating Qualcomm's licensing and chip operations, in addition to mainland China.

The people familiar with the matter told reporters that in addition to fines, lower patent licensing costs, the abolition of Qualcomm's implementation of the "Anti-licensing agreement" in which.

It is understood that the so-called "reverse patent authorization", refers to the patent manufacturers in the purchase of Qualcomm patents, must be a synchronous authorization of their own patents to Qualcomm, so that other manufacturers to buy Qualcomm patents can be free to use other people's patents. The deal means that even if some handset makers use the patents of another manufacturer, they will not have to worry about patent charges as long as they buy Qualcomm's chips. In fact, this is tantamount to a few patent phone manufacturers with a protective umbrella, so that the indulgence of these mobile phone manufacturers in the product development process, will not be in the patent issue to avoid the corresponding evasion.

Clearly, such rules are beneficial to the lack of patented new handset maker Millet (rolling information), Oppo and so on. Data show that as of November 2014, Huawei received nearly 30,000 patents. By the end of 2013, ZTE had more than 52,000 patents worldwide, and the cumulative number of patents had exceeded 16,000. In this number, Millet invention licensing only 10, Oppo has 103.

However, with the cancellation of the deal, the value of patents between future handset makers will gradually emerge, and the patent war could be at any time. In the past, there are rumors in the industry, some manufacturers have made representations to the manufacturers of the same trade, want to launch a fee negotiations on the issue of patent licensing.

Firm Attitude

In fact, patents have been a hot topic in domestic manufacturers since last year. At present, the domestic mobile phone market look, spell shape, spell technology, spell configuration, spell the price of hardware has been more and more do not see, when the product homogeneity has become an inevitable trend, manufacturers need a new marketing point, and the patent is a sharp weapon.

But whether the patent issue will be sued in the future, the manufacturers have mixed attitudes.

ZTE said to reporters that ZTE is one of the richest manufacturers of domestic patents, and we respect IPR protection actions conducive to the healthy development of terminal industries. However, there is no positive response to the issue of whether a letter will be issued against the patent problem. Close to ZTE told reporters that companies with intellectual property rights should enjoy patent bonuses, and patent companies must pay for their own short boards, of course, patent leaders can not relax, competition is just beginning.

The implication is that in the future ZTE will not give up the right to patent litigation.

Huawei, however, denied to reporters that it had sent a letter of attorney to domestic handset makers and said it would not prosecute the case in the future. Previously, micro-blog real-name certification for the Huawei Intellectual Property ministry Minister Ding Jianwen issued a statement that "we have not sent a letter before." At the same time, he pointed out that the first task of Huawei IPR is to safeguard its business security and build a fair and healthy business environment.

At this year's consumer fair in Germany, Huawei Terminal director Yu to this reporter expressed the attitude of the patent issue.

"Huawei's approach is to exchange patents, China's manufacturers do not have patents to Europe to really play them dead, no patent can not go to Europe and the United States market, come to die, you now earn a little money will return to the future." Yu told reporters. He told reporters that the European market attaches great importance to patents, in the absence of the size of the time may not be taken seriously, but once the formation of scale, immediately a variety of patent charges are very high.

For the other handset manufacturers will be issued a patent letter, cool vice President Cao reporters, mobile phones to develop, domestic manufacturers must have a certain form of cooperation.

"This year should be domestic enterprises to go abroad for a year, next year should be a breakthrough year, I believe that the next year to develop faster, I suggest that domestic enterprises or should do their own work, together to do the overseas market." There is not much point in fighting domestic manufacturers. ”

Cao to reporters that the cool of the patent is enough, including in the dual standby, communications, multimedia and other inventions patent many. However, he told reporters that, like Apple, Samsung patent lawsuit for so many years, also did not involve very deep things. "Every time you judge, find a point and it's over." ”

Over the patent ridge.

"The Chinese mainland's enforcement of IPR infringement is weak, even if one side of the final litigation failure, the punishment is relatively light, on the contrary, the prosecution has to face huge litigation costs, this input-output is not cost-effective, become overseas patent owners in China to use litigation to solve the issue of patent licensing the main obstacle. "Yanhui, Secretary general of the Mobile China Alliance, told reporters.

He said domestic handset manufacturers in the domestic relatively peaceful, but also the effectiveness of Qualcomm umbrella.

However, from this year onwards, the objective conditions of China's patent litigation has gradually become: the high-level government in different occasions to emphasize the importance of intellectual property rights, patents, the special intellectual property courts in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and the establishment of a succession. Cool Vice President Cao told reporters that the current domestic appropriate patent litigation environment is forming, the entire government, including the industry has begun to recognize the patent, and attach importance to it, the relatively few patents on the enterprise is certainly a pressure.

In contrast to the results of the Qualcomm antitrust case, another patent litigation case will increase the value of the manufacturer's patent in the future.

Lajiv Suri, Nokia's chief executive, confirmed at an analyst meeting that Nokia would not manufacture handsets directly in the future, although he said Nokia was considering raising royalties for Rajeevsuri. According to the National Intellectual Property Office Web site statistics, as of November 26, 2014, Nokia's patent search total of 12,121 pieces (article), Nokia announced the number of inventions 3,955, Nokia's invention authorized number of 3,647, Nokia's utility model number of 33 pieces, The number of designs for Nokia is 1042 pieces.

A background to the speech is that Nokia's domestic lawsuit against the company's Chinese companies is continuing.

December 2010, Nokia sued the company for 8 patent infringement, including "mobile communication device with camera", "Communication Terminal", "Select data transfer Method", "User equipment, cellular wireless network and its location Update method", "Select data transmission Method" and other basic technology patents. After a lengthy trial, the case in the first trial in July, the verdict, Nokia lost, "the choice of data transmission method" and other patents were declared invalid.

"In the past few years, China has used legal means to defend its rights, has put Nokia sued its eight patents of the five through the state Intellectual Property Office of the legitimate way ineffective, the current case of Nokia sued the Chinese court has been hit the national supreme Courts, the next one or two annual meeting is expected to have results." Yanhui told reporters that in the previous few years, the mobile Phone China Federation on behalf of more than 30 mobile phone brands and design companies with Nokia for up to 1.5 licensing negotiations, but eventually did not reach any agreement.

He told reporters that Nokia is actually in the midst of the intensive redesign of the patent business, already a number of Chinese mobile phone companies have received a letter from the Nokia lawyers. In his view, the game between Nokia and Chinese handset manufacturers depends on the result of the infringement case of Nokia v. Shanghai Hua Qin Company.

Nearly 40 companies, including Apple, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, BlackBerry, LG, Sony, Motorola and Huawei, are required to pay a patent license fee to Nokia, according to Valuewalk, a research institute.

"The issue of patents is unlikely to have any effect on the short term after the end of the Qualcomm case, but in the long run for a mainland brand that is committed to entering the global market, the patent must be passed, the patent is not enough to buy, a professional patent operation team is necessary, otherwise the market space will be limited. Yanhui told reporters.