It's important to avoid unfounded speculation and insinuation in any discussion, because they tend to muddy the water rather than clarify things. I happen to be the former customer who brought up TSC recently as a possible case of prior art in the E-Data case, and I can assure you that there truly is no 'intrigue' here. I have no particular axe to grind, am not involved with anyone connected with the case, and certainly am not shorting E-Data's stock (for the record, I don't personally hold any publicly traded stock at all.)
The first I heard of the issue was when I got one of the 75,000 copies of the 'Amnesty' package that E-Data says they mailed out. Aside from the fact that I'm in the software business, I have no idea as to why they sent it to me. I read the patent claims included in the package, and was struck by the remarkable similarity in what was being described to the TSC system of which I had been a customer back in 1979. Out of curiosity, I too looked up Ed Magnin in Switchboard (the way someone else around here did), and called to ask him if he had heard of the suit. He hadn't, but said that it was OK for me to pass his name onto people who might find it of interest, which I did in an email to various principals and counsel in the case. My motivation in this was solely (a) because I have always felt that Ed never recevied the recognition he deserved for conceiving, developing and implementing a truly innovative and effective electronic commerce system, and (b) because I was quite surprised that until now nobody had made the connection (particularly the big companies who had chosen to settle.)
While I received a number of polite thank yous for the email, apparently someone passed a copy of it on to Mr. Aharonian, who posted it publicly on the net. A Business Week reporter saw it there, thought it was interesting enough to write about, called me for confirmation, and then wrote the story.
That's what really happened; no more, no less. I sent the original email for the reasons stated, someone posted it online, Business Week saw it and wrote about it. There is nothing 'sudden', 'amazing' or 'intruiging' about it. I was not prompted to do this by any of the defendants, there was no secret scheme to short the stock, I'm certainly not making any claims about anything. All I can tell you is that, having read the patent claims, it sure sounds a lot like the system I clearly remember from the TSC days. Which, by the way, implies nothing bad about Mr. Freeny, and no implication that he was necessarily aware of TSC's earlier business in the first place. By all accounts, Mr. Freeny is a straightforward, bright guy who applied for a patent on a well-designed system. The only question here (and it is one for the courts to decide) is whether or not there existed 'prior art' on any or all of the patent claims.
So, that's the full story behind the TSC matter, and I'm sure that it will all be worked out by the courts. In the meantime, let's be careful about drawing (and publicizing) erroneous conclusions about grand conspiracy theories, OK?
-David S. Rose |
