Chipmakers Broadcom and Qualcomm are pulling out all of the stops in their high-stakes patent fight. After the Wall Street Journal editorialized against a U.S. International Trade Commission decision favorable to Irvine-based Broadcom,”one of the dumber rulings ever”,Broadcom turned to Sitrick and Co. More specifically, Broadcom spokesman Bill Blanning called in his friend and Sitrick “top gun” Lewis Phelps. Next thing you know, Broadcom general counsel David Dull had a lengthy rebuttal letter in the WSJ and Bloomberg was running an interview with Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor. Michael Sitrick’s L.A.-based PR firm has done troubleshooting for hundreds of high-profile clients, from Global Crossing and US Air to Michael Ovitz and most recently, Paris Hilton; it advised the OC supes in the county bankruptcy. The ITC ruling, which bans imports of cell phones containing certain Qualcomm chips, will stand unless President Bush or his trade rep uncharacteristically overturns it by Aug. 6 …
With the feds expanding their probe of Broadcom’s options to include drug use allegations against ex-CEO Henry Nicholas (an accusation denied by Nicholas’ lawyer), the Insider thinks Bill might want to keep Lewis on the line …
Whatever the impact of the bus strike,a non-factor for most of automobile-centric Orange County,it has affected far fewer than the 220,000 or 225,000 daily “riders” cited by the OC Register and L.A. Times. Those figures are an OCTA tabulation of rides: A round trip counts twice, a round trip with a transfer each way counts as four. A reasonable guesstimate is that about 100,000 people, or 3% of the population, ride the buses on a weekday. Of those, an estimated 20,000 are served by non-striking contractors or OCTA supervisors who have kept a couple of popular lines running. That leaves about 80,000 people without their bus. The Insider acknowledges the hardship to these working poor, students and others, but notes their resourcefulness in finding other ways to get around: Employers throughout the county, from restaurants to Disneyland, have reported little or no disruptions …
Has anybody around here not seen the Stanley Cup? …
Chapman U’s recent economic conference featured the expected Jim Doti sports taunt of USC (updated cumulative lacrosse score: Panthers 65, Trojans 21). But the event at the Westin South Coast Plaza included financial bragging, too. Kim Burdick of title sponsor Bank of America said Chapman has a return on assets of 16% (the return includes gifts, grants, tuition and endowment earnings), compared with ROA of about 5% each for Chapman academic peers Pepperdine and Claremont.
