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Exclusive: Evidence in new case suggests Obama admin colluded with Big Tech to steal invention that led to Chinese dominance
Jeff Parker, the CEO of the small Florida-based technology company ParkerVision, explained to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck Thursday how tech giant Qualcomm allegedly stole one of the most revolutionary patented innovations in American history with the help of elements of the Obama administration — technology that was ultimately offshored to China, possibly giving America's pre-eminent adversary a competitive edge.
"We are at the beginning of seeing corruption exposed like never before in America," said Beck.
Long war
ParkerVision has spent around 11 years fighting Qualcomm over the tech giant's alleged infringement of its patented technology concerning "down-converting" electromagnetic signals — a process now used in virtually every phone, wireless device, and Bluetooth device.
Representatives of the two companies apparently met in the early 2000s, with Qualcomm expressing an interest in acquiring rights to ParkerVision's invention, which would have helped it connect phones to the internet. Qualcomm, a multinational company headquartered in San Diego, reportedly signed multiple special nondisclosure agreements in order to learn about how ParkerVision's down-converting system worked, particularly its energy sampling technique, which differed from the voltage sampling technique previously used in conventional down-converting systems.
According to Parker, the two companies were unable to reach a licensing agreement and went their separate ways. A few years later, Qualcomm started using a revolutionary new chip for smartphones that created major waves, apparently taking the company from around 30% to roughly 90% market share. The phones that drove this growth allegedly relied on ParkerVision's patented technology.
After spotting what appeared to be its technology discussed in a Qualcomm conference paper, ParkerVision launched an investigation and determined, partly on the basis of reverse engineering, that its patented technology had been stolen. ParkerVision filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm in 2011.
Parker told Beck that emails exposed during discovery showed frustrated Qualcomm engineers who were facing pressure to make a third-generation chip discussing a return to the ParkerVision technology.
Court documents reveal that the jury that saw that and other internal communications returned a unanimous verdict in 2013 "finding that Qualcomm directly and indirectly infringed" upon multiple claims across four asserted patents and awarded ParkerVision $173 million in damages.
'They're having a conversation.'
The following year, U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton, an Obama-nominated federal judge in Florida, ordered Qualcomm to meet with ParkerVision — which had sought nearly $500 million in damages — to negotiate ongoing royalties. Just weeks later, however, Dalton overturned the jury's verdict and killed the case, citing "an insufficient evidentiary basis" for the finding of patent infringement.
Obama administration's fingerprints
Jeff Parker noted that between the time Dalton ordered Qualcomm to meet with ParkerVision to negotiate royalties on May 1, 2014, and his reversal of the case in June 2014, there were multiple signs that then-President Barack Obama and his Department of Justice may have placed their thumbs on the scales.
It is clear, for instance, that the ParkerVision case was on the radar of both the White House and the Obama Department of Justice — helmed at the time by Eric Holder, who previously worked at one of Qualcomm's largest lobbying firms, Covington and Burling.
According to visitor logs for the ParkerVision website provided to Blaze News, elements of the Obama Department of Justice and Qualcomm visited the website 37 times and viewed 139 subpages between Feb. 6, 2013, and July 21, 2023 — with plenty of traffic inbound from the DOJ in the lead-up to the case's termination by the Obama judge.
Nearly two weeks later, ParkerVision allegedly logged a visit to its website from the "Executive Office of the President" with a matching IP address. A LeadLander report indicated the apparent visitor from the White House, like the DOJ, was apparently interested only in the company's patent lawsuit against Qualcomm.
A specific Obama trip makes the timing of the White House visit to the ParkerVision website all the more suspicious.
The Associate Press reported ahead of the jury verdict's reversal that Obama was traveling to California for a May 8, 2014, fundraiser with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the home of billionaire Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, where the price per person was $10,000. By that time, Jacobs had already poured over $2 million into super PACs supporting Obama.
Parker suggested to Beck that the coincidental visits to identical pages on the ParkerVision website from both the Obama administration and Qualcomm locations gave off the distinct impression that "they're having a conversation."
He noted further that his subsequent Freedom of Information Act requests aimed at ascertaining who precisely in the Obama administration was visiting the ParkerVision website went nowhere, in part because certain relevant information was reportedly "lost."
Blaze News reached out to Qualcomm regarding the insinuation that the Obama administration meddled on its behalf as well as the assertion that it stole ParkerVision's innovation but did not immediately receive a response.
The ParkerVision CEO noted in the first of a series of videos titled "Against the Giants," published Thursday, that his company has filed a second lawsuit against Qualcomm and a judge has indicated he is ready to take it to trial.
Chinese edge
Parker told Beck that his company is not the only entity adversely impacted by the alleged patent infringement. He suggested that China, having apparently stolen the technology in turn from Qualcomm — which in 2010 opened a research and development facility in Shanghai — may now have a technological edge on American companies and America in general.
'If they get ahead of us in the [AI] race, we're in big trouble.'
"Look, you can't make these kind of chips without our technology," continued Parker. "Huawei — Qualcomm just acknowledged in their own reporter a month or two ago — now has their own 5G chip set. They don't need a single chip from the West. How did Huawei come to develop their own chips?"
"A lot of big companies went to China initially to get cheap manufacturing labor, but then the Chinese Communist Party said, 'No, if you want to do business in China, you got to bring your engineers. You have to set up shop to develop products here, and you have to show us how it is made. You must turn over your intellectual property,'" Parker told Beck.
Noting that he just observed that an engineer who worked at Qualcomm on his allegedly stolen technology migrated to Huawei to work on the same technology, Parker intimated that the Chinese are liberally leaning on American innovations and stealing Western companies' patented technologies, including his own, showing no signs of stopping.
Parker said in the "Against the Giants" video that "right now, China is cleaning our clock because we have allowed these companies to steal innovation, take it to China, and now the Chinese are making their own products from those innovations, and we are no longer building our innovation economy like we used to."
"If our large tech companies, Big Tech, are willing to take these kinds of intellectual property overseas and put them in China, India, Taiwan, where we have no control, you can only imagine what could happen," continued Parker. "If they get ahead of us in the [AI] race, we're in big trouble."
The tech CEO suggested that the American government is failing American innovators and small companies and needs to smarten up if the nation seeks to compete with China. That will require a more vigorous defense of patents and patent holders and a firmer hand when dealing with multinational giants working to "crush these emerging companies."
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