Hmm. It looks to me as if the ITC is actually doing the right job. That a large number of cell phone firms and their customers are benefitting from what has been determined to be patent infringement is PRECISELY all the more reason for the ITC to act. The fact of such a large number of people buying these phnes demonstrates the injury to the plaintiff. Were I the patent holder I’d be happy that the government isn’t selling me down the river just because doing so might be popular.
Patent Law is stretched so thin there’s no vestige of meaning or rationality in it. It is pure legal rhetoric.
“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any ...”
The background to this story reveals this action by the ITC to be a transaparent ruse by European Cell Phone Providers to slow down the rapid adoption of Qualcomm’s new CDMA signalling standard for 3G cell phones and a blatant abuse of patent law to hamstring a competitor with a technologically superior product.
The Europen Plaintiff in this case, Broadcom, bought a tiny and obscure Cell Phone Power System Manufacturer about 6 months ago that had a patent portfolio that may or may not have slightly been infringed by by Qualcomm’s new chip.
The ITC rules for cases of this type should be set up in such a way as to not allow such an obviously commercial busniess strategy to be pursued through patent law. Qualcomm’s CDMA Standard is triumphing in the marketplace and like many maketplace losers Broadcom has responded with a litigation strategy rather than with product innovation.