Mobile technology company Qualcomm Incorporated is planning to change its corporate structure. It says the reasons include improving its product delivery and protecting its patent portfolio from any claims that involve other parts of the company.
After the restructure there’ll be a new wholly-owned subsidiary called Qualcomm Technologies Inc (QTI). This business will handle Qualcomm’s research and development activities along with its product and services businesses, including the QCT semiconductor business.
Most of the company’s patent portfolio will continue to be owned by Qualcomm Incorporated, although QTI and its subsidiaries will own patents specifically developed for the purposes of providing open source software contributions by QTI and its subsidiaries. One of the aims is to help ensure that QTI’s activities don’t require licenses for any of Qualcomm Incorporated’s patents.
Dr Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, said “Our internal reorganization will provide even greater protection for our industry-leading intellectual property portfolio as our products and services businesses seek to accelerate innovation and deliver our products to market quickly. We are confident that this change to our corporate structure will be accomplished with little to no disruption to employees and customers. As always, Qualcomm remains committed to being a company that creates, develops, sells and licenses state of the art technology through its products and services businesses, as well as its licensing business.”