SAN DIEGO—Qualcomm Inc. says it has signed a new royalty-bearing patent license agreement giving Soma Networks Inc. license to develop, manufacture and sell subscriber units, modem cards and infrastructure equipment based on Qualcomm’s OFDM and OFDMA technology.
Soma provides last-mile broadband wireless access technology and said its agreement with Qualcomm future-proofs its solutions and protects its customers’ investments.
“By expanding our agreement with Qualcomm, we ensure that we have clear rights to use Qualcomm’s intellectual property within our recently announced SoftAir FlexMAX solution,” said Yatish Pathak, chief executive officer of Soma.
Soma builds WiMAX equipment, and the company’s new licensing agreement with Qualcomm indicates Qualcomm is beginning to develop a technology licensing business in the WiMAX industry. Indeed, when Qualcomm acquired OFDM vendor Flarion, Qualcomm said it hoped to earn royalty payments from WiMAX vendors.
WiMAX uses OFDM technology.
