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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stu Bishop who wrote (5717)	7/5/1999 11:10:00 PM
From: Richard Habib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

Stu, I posted this back on 17 Jun to Peter but no one responded. What do you think of Wind having only 1 registered U.S. patent. Also, I wonder if anyone knows how much is "significant" which is how the last 10Q describes the portion of revenue coming from VME or basically one off government/defense and academic projects. Here are relavent sections of the last 10Q. Rich DEPENDENCE ON VME MARKET A significant amount of Wind River's revenues historically has been derived from sales of systems built to the VME (versabus module eurocard) standard. These systems typically are used in high cost, low volume applications, including military, telecommunications, space and research applications. Although Wind River believes that revenues from sales of products designed for embedded systems applications will account for an increasing percentage of Wind River's revenues in the future, Wind River expects revenues from the VME market to continue to be significant for the foreseeable future. Academic institutions and defense industry participants, which generate a significant portion of Wind River's VME revenues, are dependent on government funding, the continued availability of which is uncertain. Typically, Wind River's VME customers have received government funding prior to placing its product orders with Wind River. Any unanticipated future termination of government funding of VME customers could have a material adverse effect on Wind River's business, financial condition and results of operations. LIMITED PROTECTION OF PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY; RISKS OF INFRINGEMENT Wind River's success is heavily dependent upon its proprietary technology. To protect its proprietary rights, Wind River relies on a combination of copyright, trade secret, patent and trademark laws, nondisclosure and other contractual restrictions on copying, distribution and technical measures. Wind River seeks to protect its software, documentation and other written materials through trade secret and copyright laws, which provide only limited protection. In addition, Wind River has one registered U.S. patent. There can be no assurance that the claims allowed will be of sufficient scope or strength (or be issued in all countries where Wind River's products can be sold) to provide meaningful protection or any commercial advantage to Wind River. As a part of its confidentiality procedures, Wind River generally enters into nondisclosure agreements with its employees, consultants, distributors and corporate partners and limits access to and distribution of its software, documentation and other proprietary information. End user licenses of Wind River's software are frequently in the form of shrink wrap license agreements, which are not signed by licensees, and therefore may be unenforceable under the laws of many jurisdictions. Despite Wind River's efforts to protect its proprietary rights, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy Wind River's products or to reverse engineer or obtain and use information that Wind River regards as proprietary. There can be no assurance that Wind River's competitors will not independently develop technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to Wind River's technologies. Policing unauthorized use of