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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tumbleweed who wrote (6293)	7/8/1999 8:32:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Joe, the reason most of us are optimistic about the outcome of the Lexar litigation goes back to Harari's remarks at the conference call discussing the most recent quarterly financial statement. At that time, he mentioned that the judge presiding at a preliminary hearing on the Lexar claims had said that he thought SanDisk would prevail. The purpose of a preliminary hearing is to help bring the opposing parties to a point where the dispute can be resolved without the added expense of a trial. Lexar, the plaintiff in the case, was told, in effect, that it didn't have a very good case. One would suppose they would heed the warning, but sometimes they do just the opposite. On top of the patent litigation, Lexar recently filed another lawsuit charging unfair advertising and a number of related issues. Lawsuits are expensive. This one looks even worse than the patent suit, but the purpose in filing it may be to gain leverage by offering a deal where Lexar drops all its claims in return for not having to pay SNDK for lost sales. If Lexar actually loses these suits, the company will probably go broke, and SanDisk won't get anything. SanDisk undoubtedly knows this and is trying to do what it can to maximize the compensation it is probably entitled to. If you look at the recent patent settlement between QUALCOMM and ERICSSON, you can find a parallel. Ericsson agreed to a settlement shortly after the court released its findings resulting from the preliminary hearing. QUALCOMM was aided, however, by a ruling from the U.S. Patent Office, which affirmed the key digital cellular patent owned by QUALCOMM, adding 19 additional attributes to the already approved 49 attributes. Ericsson knew when to fold, but was able to negotiate a face saving deal, buying QUALCOMM's infrastructure unit that was losing money, and gaining access to some, but not all of QUALCOMM's patents. Another reason why it's likely SNDK will prevail in the Lexar suit is the earlier ruling denying Samsung access to any U.S. markets unless they agreed to pay royalties to SNDK. This ruling established, for practical purposes, the legitimacy of SNDK flash memory patents. So, taking all these things into consideration, it is not speculative to predict that SNDK will prevail. The main question remains when, not whether.

To: Tumbleweed who wrote (6293)	7/8/1999 2:27:00 PM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Joe and Thread, CompUSA has reassigned the digital cameras and PDA's to a larger, more visible area on the floor. This has been a long time coming. I still find it aggravating to pick up a device tethered down by a security wire(s) that has been fingered by a couple hundred other people, parts missing, buttons damaged, dead batteries, etc... I find on-line shopping easier for the informed consumer. Prices are considerably lower, no State sales tax is needed and there is no high school kid trying to sell you a service contract. The selection at CompUSA is still pretty limited. They continue to feature Lexar and Lexar CF cards (upto 32 MB), 8 MB SmartMedia cards, and little in the way of a visible SanDisk presence. I am concerned that the SanDisk 48 MB cards are out of stock on most of the on-line sites and wonder if they are closing out the 32 MBit technology to make room for the 64 MBit cards. I had hoped to see sites flush with stock of both the 48 MB and 64 MB SanDisk cards. What is the problem? Ausdauer