>>>Tonto, this decision bodes well for those short AVNT. It appears that judge Whyte has heard the appeal court. It seems very likely to me that AVNT will be enjoined on their Acquarius products. What appears less certain, however, is whether CDN will be able to produce enough evidence that the other products being released by AVNT contain stolen code and should also be enjoined. It would be very unfortunate indeed if a company could escape enforcement of a judge's injunction indefinitely by playing games in the marketing of the software under different names, and for that matter by separate legal entities.
<<<<
Allow me to jump in very quickly. I am speaking from a perspective
of a user of CDN and AVNT products. I am not a supporter of either
CDN or AVNT, but I simply find this doomsday sentiment about AVNT
rather intriquing and in truth counter intuitive based on the AVNT's
product line, acquired technology and financial position.
What other AVNT products are being considered to be enjoined other than the placement and route tools? Has it been proven that Aquarious also contains codes from CDN? What about the fact that Aquarious would be phased out soon in favor of a independent P&L product developed by the avanti's ISS division?
>>>>
Note that the new software is being marketted in Japan by a subsidiary know as Galaxy. Since that company is not named in the litigation (yet) it will likely not be enjoined. If I was judge Whyte, I would clamp down on this legal gamesmanship. It is clearly contempt of court. We shall see if Judge Whyte has the courage to do what is right.
<<<
My question is does he have the authority?
>>>
From CDN's perspective, I believe they are on the right track in attacking the users of AVNT software, even if they are also attacking their own customers. By attacking the revenue stream, they will do real longterm damage to AVNT in the marketplace.
<<<
This is what I don't understand. One of the reasons why some big customers defected to AVNT is because 1) they didn't like CDN products. 2) they don't like how they are being treated. (I worked
at Intel, CDN sales force can be pretty hard to deal with.) Why
would Joe Costello want to alienate those companies even more?
Especically, we are not talking about small companies that CDN
can terroize, we are talking about companies with a flick of a
little finger can severly hurt CDN credibility wise and financially.
I really don't think this is smart business.
How would this affect AVNT? Does the fact that CDN threaten
AVNT customers with litigation hurt AVNT's revenue stream? Yes,
I think so in the short term, but AVNT's product line have
diversified quite a bit with acquisition of new technology. The
fact I want to raise is that (my personal opinion) AVNT has
estabilished themselves as the leader in physical design with
the acquisition the likes of Meta Soft(Hspice) and TMAI. This is
an area that I feel CDN has been lacking. And ceratinly an area
they have no control over.
>>>
I noticed that TMA thought that the termination of their partnership with CDN was important enough to make a public announcement about, even though they also indicated that it would not mean any meaningful loss of revenue. I do not understand the rationale for the announcement on their part if their is no loss of revenue. Does anyone know when the TMA deal is supposed to close, and whether they need shareholder approval?
Ron
<<<<
True, I think what hurt the revenue was the uncertainty due to
the acquisition and the reorganization of the sales channels. So
several orders were delayed. That is my guess. TMAI has very little
competition in their product line. I expect them to recover very
quickly next quarter. But even that is only a very small part
of revenue compare to AVNT so it won't effect them. What is
important is that AVNT has gained an interesting new technology
which they can think of ways to exploit.
Majority of shares of TMAI are owned by a few people. I have
no reason to believe that they will block the acquisition. Since
the shareholders sees this as an opportunity to expand into a
larger market.
Hey, I am not for or against CDN or AVNT. I am just playing
the devils advocate by raising alternative views.
Final question for those of you who are shorting the stock.
What would happend if AVNT have an excellent quarter in earnings?
(I am looking at their numbers, back logs ... etc. The numbers
actually look pretty good so it is not totally unlikely).
Would the threat of litigation still affect the stock price
that much?
- Chung |
