ParkerVision Patents and Patent Applications Pending – April 27, 2005

2000
4/11/2000, PR Newswire, “ParkerVision Receives First Patent for Its Wireless Technology”: It is part of an overall intellectual property strategy and includes more than 40 other patents pending.
5/9/2000, PR Newswire, “ParkerVision Receives Patent for Core D2D Receiver Technology”: It is part of ParkerVision’s overall intellectual property strategy, which includes more than 50 other patents pending.
5/11/2000, PR Newswire, “ParkerVision Receives Third D2D Patent”: It is part of ParkerVision’s overall intellectual property strategy, which includes over 50 other patents pending.
7/18/2000, PR Newswire, “ParkerVision Receives Patent for Its Core D2D Technology: It is part of ParkerVision’s overall intellectual property strategy, which includes more than 70 other patents pending.

2001
7/24/2001, PR Newswire, “ParkerVision Receives Fifth Wireless Patent”: It is part of ParkerVision’s overall intellectual property strategy, which includes 5 U.S. patents and more than 80 other patents pending in the United States and throughout the world.

2002
3/5/2002, PR Newswire, “ParkerVision Receives Sixth Wireless Patent”: The company is aggressively pursuing the protection of its RF technology and has more than 80 additional patents pending and continues to file additional protection related to its wireless technology.

Observations
We also investigated the claims about the total number of patents and pending applications from PRKR press releases. We note that these press releases are at least 36 months old. The US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) publishes a pending patent applications four months after filing or eighteen months after the earliest filing date to 18 months after they are received and all patents about a month after they issue.(1) The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) also publishes both patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). We note that WIPO does not issue patents – a PCT application is only effective as a “placeholder” to retain an earlier priority date for up to 30 months prior to filing a national phase application in a foreign country. We note one exception: prior to November 29, 2000, U.S. patent applications were not published unless the inventor specifically requested publication. Applications filed prior to that date and not issued as patents would leave no discoverable traces. In fact, as the changeover date was established a year in advance, a LARGE number of applications were filed just prior to 11/29/00 to avoid pre-grant publication.

Therefore, we can verify, based on public records, the accuracy of the claims made in the press releases based on the actual published patents and patent applications in the public records.

We define “portfolio” as all issued, independent patents and patent applications (i.e., we did not count different codes for the same application number as separate patent applications as they are only different versions of the same application). Detailed holdings based on searches at the US Patent & Trademark Office website (www.uspto.gov ) and the WIPO website (www.wipo.int ) are given in Appendix 2. We summarize the following statistics for ParkerVision assigned intellectual property holdings at the time of the press releases:

Year, PR Portfolio, Total Portfolio, D2D Portfolio, VIDEO Portfolio
≤1998 NA 23 04 19
1999 NA 39 19 20
2000
04/11/00 40 45 25 20
05/11/00 50 48 28 20
07/18/00 70 49 29 20
12/31/00 NA 54 34 20
2001
07/24/01 80 63 39 24
12/31/01 NA 65 41 24
2002
03/05/02 80 69 43 26
12/31/02 NA 84 56 28

This means that in 2000, when the first press release was made about PRKR’s D2D technology, PRKR’s total portfolio really consisted of only 55% D2D filings (25 D2D items out of a total portfolio of 45 items). The portion of D2D intellectual property grew somewhat during 2000 to about 63%. For the first two press releases, the portfolio size quoted was more or less consistent with our search results. However, the first inconsistency appeared in July 2000.
In 2000, PRKR claimed that its total portfolio grew from “more than 40” items to “more than 70” items within 3 months. However, we found that the portfolio only grew from 45 to 54! We cannot explain the inconsistency between the PRKR press release and our numbers, other than that:
1) PRKR may have filed 16 unpublished patent applications that have not issued, or
2) PRKR may have counted amendments to patent applications filed in internationally as separate applications.

In 2001, PRKR claimed a portfolio increase of 10 items for a total of “80 patents and applications”, about one year following the July 2000 press release. We were able to count only 63 items, of which 39 were D2D related. Again, there is an inconsistency of 17 applications, which could have the same explanation as above (at least it is consistent with the above inconsistency!) Furthermore, the D2D portion still accounted for only 63%.

In 2002, it is interesting to note that although the company continued to “aggressively pursue the protection of its RF technology”, the portfolio size of “80 patents and applications” quoted in its March 2002 press release was identical to the portfolio size claimed in the press release 7 months earlier (July 2001). In March of 2002, we compute the total portfolio to consist of 69 items, while the D2D portfolio contained only 43 “visible” items. Once again, the same explanation as in the two prior press releases can be used for a possible 16 or 17 item discrepancy. We note that PRKR did file additional U.S. patent applications in the second half of 2002, so that by the end of the year, its “visible” portfolio had expanded to 84 items. The press release, however, was premature.

In 2005, when this analysis was done, PRKR had (for D2D technology only, since the video division was sold in 2004) 23 issued U.S. patents, 4 issued EP (European) patents and no issued Japanese patents. PRKR also has 14 US patent applications pending and 15 EP/Japan applications pending. If we assume that the 16 unpublished patent applications still haven’t issued (otherwise the resulting patents would be published and “visible” in public records), the total number of issued patents was 27 out of 56+16=72 applications, which means that PRKR has an average success rate of about 38% worldwide. For an elapsed time of 3 to 7 years after filing (1998-2002), PRKR had a higher success rate in the U.S. (43%) than internationally (21%).

Notes
(1) An inventor may request that a patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office be withheld from publication provided that the inventor has not filed an application for the same invention in any foreign country or with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).