NY STEW..comments on ACTV patents:
___________________________________________________________
Subject: What patents did Liberty review before buying 26% of ACTV?
From: iatv_longter
Date: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 (EST) at 9:24:43 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And what are they worth if managed and deployed worldwide ??? Look at the partnerships ACTV is building and
ask yourself why are these partners joining with ACTV ??
Read the following comments
-----------------------------------------------------
By: whitephosphorus
Reply To: None Tuesday, 4 Apr 2000 at 7:03 AM EDT
Post # of 56765
Patents....from a recent conversation....
This note is from someone I've been talking to on ACTV for some time-
Bill:
I spoke to ## about ACTV. We have been looking at their patents and it seems to us that they, like Qualcomm, have some serious patents that the whole world will be wanting.
CDMA was an old technology...actually used for the first time in World War II. Irwin Jacobs and his EE's developed the CDMA and claimed US Patents to it. Motorola, Nokia, Ericy, LU and a host of governments disagreed and went to court on those patents. Well we all know how QCOM prevailed and went to the moon and back.
ACTV has been granted some fantastic features for Interactive Television pateneted by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Namely: Instant Messaging, Chats, Push Pull and Bookmarking (better known as ''My Favorites''). Now I am sure that Microsoft, AOL, IBM and a host of others will claim that ACTV has nothing new in those patents. But then CDMA was 50 years old when QCOM heard the same complaints. The bottom line is this....Tom Wolizen and Bill Samuels had their respective technology in place long before Interactive Television was around. They had them in place before those features were put into the iNet PC. They had them in place before AOL was AOL.
Now do you believe that ACTV will win a patent infringement case, or an injunction or any other legal battle they pick against anybody, filed in lets say the Southern District of New York? I do.
Tell us, do you think this analogy is wrong? Do you have any thoughts that might weaken this logic? Bill....if ACTV can hold those patents up in a federal court of law they will control all the best features of interactive television now coming to the fore by AOL-TWX, AT&T-ATHM and all the cable giants.
Those patents don't stop with cable television either. They apply to all digital television and digital set top boxes. That would include Direct TV, Echostar, wireless transmissions and the like.
That would make ACTV someone that AOL needs to talk to before they roll out AOL-TV this June.
If so, then this company could be a $1,000 dollar stock waiting for the lawyers to launch. Even at $30 it is very very cheap if we are right about this. I owned QCOM in the 30's 40's and never thought it would go to 1,500 - 1,600 much less in a year.
Your thoughts are welcome and ideas pursuing this as well. |
