Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business.
We are in the business of innovating and licensing our fundamental wireless technologies. We have designed and developed proprietary radio frequency (“RF”) technologies and integrated circuits based on those technologies, and we license our technologies to others 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 efforts. We have determined that our business currently operates under a single operating and reportable segment.
We currently have five licensees of our technologies, all of which resulted from our patent enforcement efforts. 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.
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We spent the majority of 2024 supporting our current patent enforcement actions, including the defense of Inter Partes Review ("IPR") actions filed against us. We currently have ten patent enforcement actions pending in the Western District of Texas against five separate foreign defendants and one domestic defendant. Three of these actions, against two separate defendants, are currently stayed pending results from other related cases. The active cases have currently scheduled trial dates beginning in 2025 through 2026. In addition, we have a patent enforcement action against Qualcomm that was remanded back to the Middle District of Florida in September 2024 following a favorable ruling from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ("CAFC") that reversed the district court's prior summary judgement against us. The Qualcomm action is awaiting a trial date, following the district court's rulings on outstanding motions. We also have an additional patent enforcement action against Qualcomm and Apple in the Middle District of Florida and against LG in the District of New Jersey, both of which are currently stayed pending the outcome of the current case against Qualcomm. A number of defendants in our patent enforcement actions have filed petitions for IPR against claims of the asserted patents. Currently, we have IPRs that have been instituted by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ("PTAB") against claims on four of our asserted patents, and one IPR that is pending a PTAB institution decision. In addition, in late 2024, we filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court with respect to two unfavorable PTAB decisions that were upheld by the CAFC through Rule 36 decisions in 2024. Our petition was denied by the Supreme Court on March 24, 2025.
See “Legal Proceedings” in Note 12 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 Note 9 to our consolidated financial statements included in Item 8 and “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 focused exclusively on our patent enforcement and licensing efforts. As of December 31, 2024, we had five licensees for our technologies. All of our license agreements resulted from settlement of patent enforcement actions initiated by us. To date, our patent license and settlement agreements have included 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, 2024, we had approximately 50 active U.S. and foreign patents related to our RF technologies. In addition, we have over 60 patents that have expired over the past seven years 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 expiration dates ranging from 2025 to 2036.
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Employees
As of December 31, 2024, 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 reverted to fully remote worksites for all of our employees. Our management, with the oversight of our Board, 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.