Standards and Intellectual Property Rights in the Age of Global Communication - A Review of the International Standardization of Third-Generation Mobile System

When the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) selected a radio access technology based on Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), sponsored by European telecommunications equipment manufactures Ericsson and Nokia, for its third-generation wireless communications system, a bitter dispute developed between ETSI and Qualcommm Inc. Qualcomm threatened to withhold its intellectual property on the CDMA technology unless the Europeans agreed to make the radio access technology backward compatible with cdmaOne, Qualcomm's favored version of CDMA. A dispute over intellectual property rights over key CDMA techniques also erupted between Ericsson and Qualcomm and both filed patent infringement in US Court. The dispute halted the standards activity and has troubled operators worldwide as well as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).