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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)

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3:59 PM EST

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To: Margarita who wrote (92141)	11/11/1999 7:10:00 PM
From: Saturn V	Read Replies (4) of 186894

The potential $2-8 Billion lawsuit against Intel, has cast a chill over the Intel bulls. I dug up one of the IMS patents in question patent.womplex.ibm.com I am not a patent lawyer, but have filed multiple patents, and have reviewed several patents to avoid infringement and potential litigation. Unfortunately I am not familiar with the microachitectural details of the Pentium II to know for sure if the IMS patent poses a problem. However I have several general observations: A The IMS patent was filed in March 1994. Intel's P6 saw first Silicon in late 1994. Since P6 was in development for a few years, Intel should have prior patent filing dates on its P6 technology. [I do not know when Intel filed its patents on the P6]. Clearly Intel reduced its technology to practice well before IMS. IMS probably never reduced its technology to practice. So the possibility of overturning the patent is very high. B. Nextgen 586 also used Emulation of the x86 Instructions, on a RISC core machine. This product was designed in the 86-89 time frame. This and the P6 development implies that the IMS patent `if broadly interpreted' would have infringed prior art. Emulation of one computer architecture on another machines goes back to the 60's. So only a narrow interpretation of the emulation claims would lead to a valid patent. I think that the possibility of P6 infringing upon the IMS patent is remote, unless the patent is interpreted too broadly, and then it will infringe prior art and be invalidated. However Merced may have a problem. In any case typical royalties in the chip business are in the range of 0.2 to 0.5%. Typically most chip companies have extensive cross licensing agreements, and no one pays anything. However the outcome of any litigation is highly unpredictable. The technical issues in the complex world of computer architecture are beyond the comprehension of all judges. We have watched the see-saw battle of the AMD/Intel litigation, which saw several reversals of decisions on appeals. Judges and juries blank out on issues of technology and latch on to something totally unpredictable. Recently several judgements in the Intel/Intergraph litigation have been reversed as well. The possibility of a billion dollar liability judgement is terribly remote, but I will keep my fingers crossed.

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