Chung, thank you for your thoughtful reply.
" 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? "
Although it has not been proven, the comments made in the court decisions seem to suggest that Acquarious may indeed contain stolen code. It will be up to CDN to prove this in the coming injunciton applicaiton. The rush to announce new products, sold under different names by new corporate entities within days of the most recent decision leads me to suspect that AVNT thinks they will be enjoined on Acquarious, and had a plan B available, namely try to cirumvent the judge's possible extension of the injunction by what I have referred to as legal gamesmanship. With respect to the jurisdictional issue you raise, obviously Judge Whyte has no jurisdiction in Japan. However, he could enjoin the sale of products in the US produced with tainted software. If the end users don't care about the US market they can comfortably ignore any US ruling. Otherwise, they should be very careful.
TMAI seems like a successful and growing business. Why would they want to take on the very significant litigaiton risk associated with AVNT? I have no trouble understanding why a company that was all smoke and mirrors anyway would want to do so, but I cannot understand the rationale for a successful company to willingly risk everything when they are innocent of any wrongdoing. Note that although the deal is structured as a merger of TMAI and a subsidiary of AVNT, the shareholders of TMAI end up with AVNT paper. Typically in a deal of this kind there is a lockup on the shares. The shareholders of TMAI could end up holding the AVNT shares through the realization of the legal nightmare that may (I believe will) follow, and have shares at the end of the day that are worth a lot less than their current TMAI paper. In my view the recent runup in AVNT price may be linked to the desire of the brokers involved to keep the price up until the deal closes so they can ensure their fees.
"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. "
Perhaps you could fill me in here. It was my impression that CDN and AVNT own the place and route market. My thinking in making my earilier comment was that those users that had to give up AVNT would have to go to CDN. Am I mistaken? Are there other credible suppliers in this field?
Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Ron |
