Will TD-SCDMA sidestep patents owned by Qualcomm? That was an interesting topic during the TD-SCDMA Forum's press conference at the 3GSM. The Chinese home-grown standard is backed by the Chinese government to promote domestic business and bypassing the royalties demanded by Qualcomm and other vendors. Yet the TD-SCDMA Forum hasn't even spoken to Qualcomm and Ericsson, another big CDMA patent holder, about IPR issues. The issue could become more sensitive given the fact that China appears to be favoring TD-SCDMA in a big way, despite its vows not to. It has ordered all W-CDMA trial networks to shut down in order to give TD-SCDMA a leg up. China's telecom regulator has selected China Mobile, China Telecom and China Netcom to build TD-SCDMA pre-commercial networks. We could see some pretty thorny IPR issues that may involve WTO action.
For more information about TD-SCDMA and patent issues:
- check out this article [1] from The Register
- read this article [2] from TelecomDirect News
Links:
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/15/china_3g_royalties/
[2] http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16691