> Qualcomm though leveraged that to extract a % of everything else in the device too using this multi-level monopoly. That wasn't OK. Except that everybody cou

> Qualcomm though leveraged that to extract a % of everything else in the device too using this multi-level monopoly. That wasn't OK. Except that everybody could have used some other technology in the standards, but they didn't want to make the bet and drive it through because the bet was risky. And, if it failed, somebody in a big semiconductor company in a nice comfortable position making a lot of money was going to get fired. I can also turn your statement around into "Qualcomm engineered a working system while their competitors all designed bits and pieces and never put the whole thing together"--which is true, by the way. I watched some of these idiotic competitors to Qualcomm build single pieces and then not cooperate with one another because they were afraid the other guy might make a little more money than they did. Qualcomm was the beneficiary of 1) a too-long patent grant and 2) a bunch of cowardly dipshits running the competing semiconductor companies. I agree that patent grants are far too long--this is the original sin that continues to haunt us even today. If stuff like software patent grants were only like 3-5 years, there would be far less opposition and there would be far fewer problems. However, I also have negative levels of sympathy for the "competitors" to Qualcomm who were whining incessantly but didn't have the brass to actually take them on. Qualcomm was very vulnerable for a very long time, but their "competitors" were a bunch of Keystone Kops who couldn't help but shoot themselves in both feet and then the head.