[sturmen]

Agreed: Qualcomm is not a "patent troll", they're a normal company with a very sizable IP portfolio they rightfully innovated and use in their own products, as well as licensing to other companies. Whether they abuse their market position is its own question, but they have nothing to do with companies that were founded solely to buy vague "shopping cart" patents and make money only via lawsuit settlements.

[bryanlarsen]

Disagree strongly. Qualcomm agreed to license their patents in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) manner in return for having those patents included in wireless standards, and then turned around and broke those agreements.

And that's really only the tip of the iceberg for the shenanigans that Qualcomm has engaged in. By spreading FUD, they were instrumental in ensuring that the US used their CDMA standard rather than the (arguably superior) European GSM standards which they didn't have any patents on.

IOW, patent trolling is legal. Qualcomm's patent trolling was so egregious that they've paid billions in antitrust fines and lost lawsuits.

[ksec]

While I dont like Qualcomm and think they are charging too much. I dont think this comment paints the whole picture.

Qualcomm doesn't licensee ONLY the wireless FRAND patents, they licenses everything from CPU to software design , battery, antenna etc patents.

Now the problem is they dont allow you to choose which one parts to license. They lump it together, and they say you are guarantee to be using one of our CPU / Antenna / Battery patents we have "invented". So just paid for the whole thing.

While you can put a price on FRAND patents, you cant fairly price the other patents which is not part of it. And, just on the defence of Qualcomm, they do actually do R&D and invent these stuff, so patents trolling isn't exactly a fair word to them.

According to Apple CEO Tim Cook spoken on record, for every 6 dollars of wireless patents, 1 dollars goes to 5 companies that is Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, etc, and 5 dollars goes to Qualcomm.

Personally I think they are charging too much. But we dont really have a way to solve this pricing problem. So legal becomes the only choice.