IFMX - Investment Discussion Message Board

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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion

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To: SemiBull who wrote (13898)	2/8/2000 9:44:00 AM
From: uu	Read Replies (2) of 14631

Let us just examine the following possibility: All products IBM is claiming to have been copied by Informix have been in the market for a few years. Now if I were a big Company's marketing and coming to realize that a smaller company all of a sudden is taking my existing and/or potential customers away I would have 3 options: 1. Start spending millions of dollars on advertising, and publicitiy to boost my own products. 2. Somehow come up with a tactic that would make an attempt in making my customers believe my products are basically the same as what the smaller company is selling. 3. Do #1 based on #2 ! So IBM's marketing comes up with this idiotic claim of "hey you all out there you know what? The line of products you are buying from this Company is basically IBM's line of products since they have been stolen from us by this other smaller Company which we are going to go after and crush them to the ground. So you might as well come and buy from us the big and good guys with innovative ideas since we provide the same stuff". And then start spending big money on advertising of this nonesense idiotic claim. By the time things are cleared IBM (or at least its marketing) would hope that they have made things so unlear and unknown that the perception would always be that Informix's products are basically cheap copies of IBM products! Most likely this distortion in truth would prevail for a very short period of time but as the saying goes truth will set everything free eventually. And for a big Company like IBM the money spend on this would be worth every penny of it even if they will end up paying fines to Informix for their idiotic claims and distorting the truth. The marketing bang they get in the short immediate term would still be much cheaper for them to actually spend on R&D and try to improve their products and/or do honest fair marketing of their products based on truth! It is sort of negative dirty politic campaigns. Regretfully IBM has been the bully for so many years when it comes to software patents. As someone who has been involved with writing and developing software patent papers I can tell one thing for certain : Software patents are similar to Arts. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder! Anyone - and I mean anyone - who writes a piece of software component can potentially claim to have a patent for certain aspects of that component (whether it is the actual design, and implementation or the process in which that particular component is used by the users). Large corporations use software patents to keep small Companies (and I do not consider Informix as small - I am referring to really the small companies) from growing. Patent claims and filing and getting the approvals are very costly and large corporations justify the costs involved as a combination of marketing and publicity while the small Companies are either too naive and too involved with the development of their core business to pay attention to patents or could not afford the costs associated with this type of marketing/publicity tactic. It is truly regretful. As far as investment in IFMX is concerned In my humble opinion, any drop in the price of the stock due to IBM's idiotic nonesense or otherwise at this time should be viewed as a golden opportunity to buy. Do not be surprised to see IFMX at $75-$80/shr by the end of this year. Regards,

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