Yeah, but I don't think that this board should be neglected either. Does anyone have any information of the POC deal? One of the posters on the Yahoo board obtained a copy of the docket entries on the suit. Initially, there was a Motion to remove the suit to the Southern District of Indiana, and that brought things to a standstill until that Motion was Denied by the Court in late January. So the Complaint was not answered by Boehringer until 2/23/98, after which the parties could commence Discovery and Depositions in preparation for trial. No trial date had been scheduled as of late March, and in ordinary course one would not expect a date to be set until some of the Discovery had been completed. Now, according the the CEO's statement in the Analyst Conference which was held a couple of weeks ago, they have some auditing being done in Europe concerning sales, etc., and that would be a part of Discovery (a broad term which covers written Interrogatories -questions- which the parties can pose to one another; Demands for Admission of Facts - which can be used to limit the cost of proving simple matters; Depositions, or the recorded questioning of witnesses under oath; and such other less usual activities as auditing, etc.
Altogether, it was all about what one would expect. A suit eventually can be very persuasive to push a party to the settlement table, but at the same time, until trial is closely approaching a defendant rarely considers "getting rid of it" by settlement unless an early settlement offers him some special gain. Here, there has been agreement between the parties (approved by the Court) that neither would try to interfere with the other as to the license agreement during the pendency of the suit...that is, Igen will not try to terminate BMG's license, and BMG will not attempt to preclude Igen from certain acts not detailed in the docket entries. As I see it, for the minute Roche is not pressured to settle by the existence of the suit, until trial time draws closer. Even so, her business plans may made the electsys so essential to her future that she would want to nail down the terms of its use at an early date, before some other deal came Igen's way that could interfere with that future. |
