Thanks for the analysis, Lee. It looks like the 'free lottery tickets' that came with our Ampex shares are starting to generate returns. I just hope that people don't fixate on this to the exclusion of the other story (KM) as well as the very promising core DST business.
My understanding is that the more common equitable defenses are noninfringement, 'unclean hands,' fraud, invalidity of patents, and implied license. I defer of couse to your obvious expertise and understanding of these matters.
Somebody also commented that the PIP patent represents AXC's best shot at getting a substantial verdict. I disagree. I just skimmed through the press releases but it looks like the PIP patent covered
television receivers only. Somebody probably pointed out that this is signficant going forward because HDTV means that over the next 2 decades or so the Television market is going to change from being the largely replacement market that it is now to a very robustly growing market. Currently, 98% of all US households have color TVs. A lesser percentage, 85% I think, own VCRs and an even lesser percentage, less than 50%, own camcorders. You can just imagine the adoption rate once the Japanese and the Koreans achieve enough economies of scale to bring down the price to the $200-$600 sweet spot. Digital TVs will no doubt continue to have PIP and there are certainly going to be new methods to split the signal (from the antenna or from the cable) and divert it to display on a secondary channel on the screen, but what I think this verdict shows is that Ampex has the one of the most practicable, if not the most practicable way of doing so and to the extent that Ampex can show that future methods have to use its patent to achieve their own innovations bodes well for the strenght of this royalty stream. Now, I hope Bramson has been making his contributions to the campaigns of his local congressmen so that he can campaign to have the PIP patents extended once they start to expire after the turn of the century. Maybe, one of Ampex's 27,000 or so shareholders (see latest SEC filings) can get a thick-skinned hombre like Sen. D'Amato to attach a rider on one of the more popular bills.
I think, however, that the VCR patents represent AXC's best shot
at getting a substantial verdict. Setting aside the breach of contract context, it must be pointed out that Ampex's VCR patents form part of Ampex's larger ROTARY HEAD core patents. These patents are considered to be PIONEERING PATENTS. It is a well established tenet of patent law that Pioneering patents are granted the broadest kind of deference and interpretation possible. I also seem to recall that PIP first showed up as a feature in VCRs. Mitsubishi may have their own patents for this but if they have to use Ampex's pioneering patents to achieve their own innovation then infringement can be proven. It also makes sense to start off with your strong claim and end with your strongest hitters. The fact that the LA case was tried first was I think a quirk in scheduling. But hey, that's already a clear win, isn't it?
In light of Ampex's victory in Los Angeles and in Delaware, I think the worst case that can happen now is that the judge will severely limit Ampex's victory thus far and probable victories to come, in ways that Lee alluded to. I am not too worried about that, however. Remember, District Court judges are generalists. All patent appeals go straight to one court now, the CFAC which is composed of judges who specialize in patent law.
Whew, even from the other side of the Pacific I am as long winded as ever, huh? Gotta go.
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