That's really more than I needed to know, Hal. I had to close one of my mind's eyes to focus only on that slave girl. I didn't know you liked them that way, duuuude!
Anyway, with the weekend coming up, some of you may want to check into Ampex's patent portfolio, specifically, the digital video aspects.
Let's start with the 10Q because I think it gives us the clearest indications yet of how Ampex is trying to use its technology to profit from the move to HDTV, or since the computer geeks are involved Digital Video. Keeping in mind Bramson's definition of his business model, i.e., self sufficient high performance systems (DIS/DCT/DST/DCRsi) + mass market components (KM + Heads?) + Royalties (VCR/8MM/6MM/TV/?), let's use the PIP patent as a starting point since it is already starting to generate some returns in the form of previous negotiated settlements and in Mitsubishi's case, a jury award (subject to appeal of course). Beforehand, it is also useful to keep in mind Red Chip's latest update on AXC which briefly described how the latest court victories (LA and Delaware 1 of 3) was significant because it widened the field for Ampex's fundamental inventions in digital signal processing, filtering, and image manipulation. (anybody with the actual writeup?)
Ampex has been in litigation with Mitsubishi regarding an Ampex patent that the Company contends was used in connection with the manufacture of certain television receivers. The subject patent expires in July 1997, but Ampex has several other patents, not currently the subject of litigation, that the Company believes may
be used by various manufacturers of television receivers. The Company may attempt to negotiate licensing agreements with certain of these manufacturers, but there can be no assurance that the Company will be successful in such efforts.
Television receivers that are designed in the future to be compatible with pending digital television broadcast standards may employ various digital video technologies developed by Ampex. The Company intends to review its patent portfolio to assess whether its patents are used in future digital television receivers or in existing television receivers that incorporate advanced digital features such as picture-in-picture. Once this assessment is complete, and if it
is determined that Ampex's patents are being used, the Company may attempt to negotiate licensing agreements with manufacturers of television receivers.
My broadcast geek vocabulary is less than elementary, but my hunch has been that Ampex doesn't really have a PIP patent per se. What they do have is a fundamental patent that has to do with the synchronization and timing and filtering of a video signal, something that they had to develop throughtout its history with linear recorders, rotary head recorders, optical recorders, and semiconductor memory.
Something so basic and necessary for something like PIP to work.
This one in particular...Patent No. 4,212,027 issued on 7/8/80 and expiring on 7/8/97....Time Base Compensator....Invented by a Gooch like dude named Maurice G. Lemoine. Can somebody confirm?
If you look at patents as building blocks that can be used as starting points for further inventions, and if you drill down the 21 references to this patent you will find, I think, some of the newer and more sophisticated patents that Ampex refered to when they said in this 10Q....
The subject patent expires in July 1997, but Ampex has several other patents, not currently the subject of litigation, that the Company believes may be used by various manufacturers of television receivers.
That's looking at it from just the PIP vantage point. It is useful to remember that when Ampex was still a unit of Allied Signal for much of the eighties, there was a major effort to get ready for what eventually proved to be a premature rush to HDTV. In other words, there was a broad based effort undertaken by what was then, at its peak, a $700 million company with 12,000 employees, to extend its pre-eminent position in broadcasting from the analog to the digital space. All of us, I think, are looking from the other side of a painful multi-year restructuring that resulted from the decision of the broadcasters to delay the process and wait for the technology to mature some more.
But, and this rises to the level of a working assumption subject to change, since Ampex has always used a high performance system approach to the way they develop products, some of their inventions are fundamental and so basic that they continue to be relevant even today.
Getting a working understanding and a realistic, cold and calculating idea of what this particular part of the business is and could be worth is an edge that, I think, all of us can use to our advantage. |
