Mention patent law at a dinner party and you’re likely to see eyes around the table glaze over. But the patent system undergirds modern U.S. technology — everything from software to the physical mechanics that make smartphones work. In the early aughts, a Florida-based company thought it was going to bring the growing technology economy to Orlando. But two decades and two patent lawsuits later, those dreams have all but evaporated.
Around the time boy bands were topping music charts, cell phone technology was on the verge of a revolution. Clunky devices that could double as doorstops were on their way out. Technological breakthroughs meant phones became pocket-sized, and this is where Jeff Parker says his company ParkerVision came into the picture.
“We enabled the smartphone to have the high data rates and the worldwide coverage and the reasonable battery life that we all take for granted today,” Parker told Orlando Weekly, “without growing the size of the phone or making smartphone companies eliminate features.”
In the late 1990s, ParkerVision entered into discussions with Qualcomm, now one of the largest wireless technology companies in the world. It looked like Parker’s company was going to kick into a higher gear. Although it’s based in Jacksonville, the company began leasing a facility in Lake Mary in 2000.
“I’m looking at this thinking, we’re going to be a 1,000-person company,” Parker said. “This is going to be fabulous. We’re going to bring all kinds of people from all over the world. People aren’t going to just be visiting Orlando because of Disney and the vacation.”
Orlando is home to one of ParkerVision’s top engineers. The company’s Lake Mary design space was more than 17,000 square feet. Parker imagined recruiting talent from the Space Coast.
But the dream came tumbling down in lawsuits and patent disputes that the company is still fighting today.
Mention radio frequency receivers at a dinner party and it’s likely to cause even more glazed eyes than patent law. Here’s a simplified version of the technology that led to the fallout between ParkerVision and Qualcomm.
Innovations in radio frequency technology — how our cell phones send and receive signals that are then converted into data — is a large part of why phones are so ubiquitous today. One of the key developments in the past two decades has been converting signals more efficiently. In old analog hardware, like radios from a century ago, sending and receiving signals was constant work and required bulky mechanics to do the job.
Parker says his company’s energy sampling technology, which “samples” slices of radio waves rather than converting the entire signal, offered an elegant solution while also cutting down on noise. And all of it was easily achieved by a small chip.
“One of the most interesting parts of our story is the lead inventor [David Sorrells] who developed this was …….