Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business.
 
We are in the business of innovating fundamental wireless technologies and products. We have designed and developed proprietary radio frequency (“RF”) technologies and integrated circuits for use in wireless communication products.
 
We have expended significant financial and other resources to research and develop our RF technologies and to obtain patent protection for those technologies in the United States of America (“U.S.”) and certain foreign jurisdictions. We believe certain patents protecting our proprietary technologies have been broadly infringed by others and therefore the primary focus of our current business plan is the enforcement of our intellectual property rights through licensing efforts and patent infringement litigation.
 
We currently have patent enforcement actions ongoing in various U.S. district courts against mobile handset, smart television and other WiFi product providers, as well as semiconductor suppliers for the infringement of several of our RF patents. We have made significant investments in developing and protecting our technologies, the returns on which are dependent upon the generation of future revenues for realization.
 
We spent the majority of 2022 supporting our current patent enforcement actions.  Beginning in 2020, we filed several patent enforcement cases in the Western District of Texas and, through 2022, we had entered into three patent license and settlement agreements with defendants, resulting in the dismissal of four pending actions.  In February 2023, we entered into another patent license and settlement agreement and dismissed two additional actions .  We currently have five enforcement actions pending in Texas against four separate foreign defendants. 
 
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Additionally, we had two patent enforcement cases pending against Qualcomm in the Middle District of Florida.  In March 2022, the district court in one of those cases granted Qualcomm's motion for summary judgment ruling that Qualcomm does not infringe the three patents in the case.  We have an appeal pending at the Federal Circuit which is expected to be decided in 2023.  The second case which is pending against Qualcomm and Apple has been stayed pending the outcome of the first case . We also have a patent enforcement action against LG in the District of New Jersey that is stayed pending resolution of the Qualcomm and Apple case in Florida.  See “Legal Proceedings” in Note 13 to our consolidated financial statements included in Item 8 for a detailed description of our various patent enforcement actions.
 
A significant portion of our litigation costs have been funded under a secured contingent payment arrangement with Brickell Key Investments, LP (“Brickell”), contingent arrangements with legal counsel, and various debt and equity financings. See “Liquidity and Capital Resources” included in Item 7 for a full discussion of our litigation funding arrangements and our equity and debt financings.
 
Products and Licenses
 
Since 2019, we have not offered any products for sale, but rather focused exclusively on our patent enforcement and licensing efforts. As of December 31, 2022, we had four licensees for our technologies, including one licensee added in 2022.  All of our license agreements resulted from settlement of patent enforcement actions initiated by us.  Our patent license and settlement agreements typically include a one-time, up-front payment to cover past and future use of our technologies, with no future recurring revenue.  See “Revenue” in Note 3 to our consolidated financial statements included in Item 8 for additional details.
 
RF Technologies
 
Our RF technologies enable highly accurate transmission and reception of RF carriers at low power consumption, thereby enabling extended battery life, and certain size, cost, performance, and packaging advantages.  We believe the most significant hurdle to the licensing and/or sale of our technologies and related products is the widespread use of certain of our technologies in infringing products produced by companies with significantly greater financial, technical, sales, and marketing resources. We believe we can secure licensing agreements with unauthorized current users of one or more of our technologies based on a solid and defensible patent portfolio and the advantages enabled by our unique patent-protected technologies.
 
Patents and Trademarks
 
We consider our intellectual property, including patents, patent applications, trademarks, and trade secrets to be significant to our business plan. We have a program to file applications for and obtain patents, copyrights, and trademarks in the U.S. and in selected foreign countries where we believe filing for such protection is appropriate to establish and maintain our proprietary rights in our technology and products.  As of December 31, 2022, we had approximately 60 active U.S. and foreign patents related to our RF technologies.  In addition, we have a number of recently expired patents that we believe continue to have significant economic value as a result of our ability to assert past damages in our patent enforcement actions.  We estimate the economic lives of our patents to be the shorter of fifteen years from issuance or twenty years from the earliest application date.  Our current portfolio of issued patents have expirations ranging from 2023 to 2036.
 
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Employees
 
As of December 31, 2022, we had seven full-time employees and one part-time employee.  We also outsource certain specialty services, such as information technology and public relations, and utilize contract staff and third-party consultants from time to time to supplement our workforce.  Our employees are not represented by any collective bargaining agreements and we consider our employee relations to be satisfactory.
 
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, we have reverted to fully remote worksites for all of our employees.  Our management, with the oversight of our board of directors, monitors the hiring, retention, and management of our employees.
 
Available Information and Access to Reports
 
We file annual reports on Forms 10-K, quarterly reports on Forms 10-Q, proxy statements and other reports, including any amendments thereto, electronically with the SEC. The SEC maintains an Internet site (http://www.sec.gov) where these reports may be obtained at no charge.  We also make copies of these reports available, free of charge through our website (http://www.parkervision.com) via the link “SEC filings” as soon as practicable after filing or furnishing such materials with the SEC.
 
Corporate Website
 
We announce investor information, including news and commentary about our business, financial performance and related matters, SEC filings, notices of investor events, and our press and earnings releases, in the investor relations section of our website (http://ir.parkervision.com).  Additionally, if applicable, we webcast our earnings calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community in the investor relations section of our website. Investors and others can receive notifications of new information posted in the investor relations section in real time by signing up for email alerts and/or RSS feeds.  Further corporate governance information, including our governance guidelines, Board committee charters, and code of conduct, is also available in the investor relations section of our website under the heading “Corporate Governance.”  The content of our website is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our website are intended to be inactive textual references only.