I was quite surprised by the jury trial. I thought maybe a patent judge would listen, since I'm sure this would be quite complex, figuring out who would do it. Obviously I'm guessing, but I wonder if these factors will come into play:
tech too dizzyingly complex to understand, especially lawyerese trying to explain it
jury ignores much of weeks of boring testimony, expert witnesses, etc, and just decides to side with the little guy (Ampex) against the big mean foreign Japanese corporation that made Zero fighters that attacked Pearl Harbor (tho most people's history is so bad they wouldn't know what Pearl Harbor was, and I'm not anti-Japanese either!)!
Wonder how simplistically people will "size down" the obviously highly technical nature of the arguments. But then, my wife said they'll choose in Mitsubishi's favor because they'll be grateful for all the Mitsu TV products they have in their home, so what do I know! Still, to have to come up with one decision after weeks of lawyerese, I'd think they'd have to simplify the case in the jurors minds. I cast my vote on the "big bad foreign company vs the small struggling American company" principle to sway the jury at least simplistically on AXC's side. But then damages, punishments, etc, we have absolutely no clue what that'll be. Maybe the jury will sock it to Mitsu outrageously???
Have a question for anyone who has an opinion- just how big do you think DST/DIS/DCR can grow by 2000? I've seen Jubimer of AOL fame claim it could grow to "several hundred million" by 2000. Seems hi to me.
We do know that satellite launches are going to go sky high very soon, and will continue increasing very rapidly, what with the competing whole world telephony/internet access market up for grabs by Teledesic /Hughes/ others. Does DCRsi go into each one? DCRsi is obviously AXC's highest margin product by far, and I wonder if they're a shoe in for huge growth with the satellite boom coming very soon.
Also, we know DST has cracked the telcom market, but only with the big 3 so far. And how many terabyte size machines does each one need?
Also, we know they're trying to hire 4 DST salespeople for 4 regions of US, but note that they're only targeting Fortune 100 companies. How many companies is that? Only 100. I was shocked that they didn't consider the other 400 in the 500 list as a market for DST. If its that hi end, the potential market, tho vaster than what they're in so far, is so highly limited, if only the 100 biggest US corps are seen as prospective customers.
While we do know that company data is increasingly seen as a huge underutilized asset, and data mining software is starting to take off in a big way, I wonder just how much AXC's very hi end machines will continue to be too hi priced for almost all companies. Mind you, I am expecting growth from that category, just don't know if it'll end up being 300M in sales in a few years. I wonder if 100-150M is more like it????
It would seem that at present DST sales would have to be below 50M, for it to double from 95 and yet have only a 10% increase effect on DST/DCRsi/DIS category which had only 72M in sales in 96. Is less than 50M really capable of growing to more than 200-300M in sales????? Comments and opinions please. |
