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Qualcomm in contempt for violating court order

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Back in the days when Jaffe and Lerner had some credibility among some people, one recalls that, at page 35 of Innovation and Its Discontents, the authors praised Qualcomm for the way it handled patent matters.

US District Judge James Selna has just found Qualcomm in contempt of his court order.

TradingMarkets (from datamonitor) writes: David Rosmann, vice president of intellectual property litigation at Broadcom, said: "Over the past two years, Qualcomm has been found to have infringed four Broadcom patents, abused the standards-setting process, and committed gross discovery misconduct, and now has been held in contempt of a court-ordered injunction."

Jaffe and Lerner are simply out of touch with the reality of patents and intellectual property: the people they praise are the people getting sanctioned for abuse of the patent system. Yet Howard Berman brought Jaffe in to testify as an expert before his subcommittee.

***Separately, from PC Mag -->

"I do believe there is a need for patent reform [but] U.S. intellectual property patents are the gold standard in the world," said Qualcomm's Rosenberg. "Reform has to be in the Patent Office itself; adding resources, but not necessarily doing many of the things [current patent legislation] focused on, like changes to how damages are calculated."

Lofgren was confident that patent ? and immigration ? reform would be addressed fully when Congress reconvenes under a new administration in January.

"We had a patent bill. Not to say it was a perfect bill, but we sent it out of the House with the belief that the Senate would do further refinements and instead they collapsed," she said. "So we will be starting again next year."

Ergen said he had mixed emotions regarding patent reform, given the numerous patent battles he has gone after at EchoStar.

"I'd like to see the loser pay in any kind of patent case, so if you want to sue us and you lose, you're paying our defense bill," Ergen said. "But I think it's tough because we're on both sides. We'll spend $10 million to fight a case that somebody would've settled for $100,000 because someone needs to do it."

There article discussed citizenship for US college grads-->

"Over 50 percent of post-graduate degrees are given to foreign nationals," said Don Rosenberg, general counsel and executive vice president at Qualcomm. "It's just insane to educate these people here and tell them they can't stay here and join the companies here we are all trying to support."

"The fact that you could get a degree from MIT and not become immediately a permanent U.S. citizen is crazy," said Brad Feld, managing director of the Foundry Group, a venture capital firm.

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 01, 2008 (boomark / email).