The report that Qualcomm has decided to collect patent fees on China's homegrown standard TD-SCDMA is not true, said sources close to Qualcomm.

A vice president of Qualcomm said at a 3G World Congress held in Hong Kong that Qualcomm has decided to collect patent fees on TD-SCDMA. The news aroused attention in the mobile telecommunication field.

The sources close to Qualcomm said, however, the company never made such claims. Qualcomm has been keeping a close eye on and giving support to the progress of TD-SCDMA and hopes to cooperate with Chinese companies for a win-win result in the industry, it said.

The concerned department of Qualcomm is contacting the reporter who wrote the news and will make a rectification announcement later.

Qualcomm has been giving great support to China's 3G market, said the sources. Recently, the company donated a batch of terminal testing machines worth over one million US dollars to the Academy of Telecommunications under the Ministry of Information Industry.

The academy, on behalf of the Chinese companies engaged in 3G development, is negotiating with Qualcomm on patent license agreement. The latest negotiation held in November ended with no fruits.

TD-SCDMA is considered the homegrown technology for the third generation mobile communication and Chinese companies hope to avoid expensive patent fees in the 2G period. However, in the technology standard based on CDMA, the patent shares of Chinese companies are still unclear.

Media report said that Qualcomm who has CDMA patent had claimed patent ownership of all technologies with suffix of CDMA.

Source: Xinhua