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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (12258)	12/7/1999 9:04:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

John, Great, great, absolutely GREAT question! Is that a differentiator of Gorillas from potential gorillas, the extent to which their proprietary positions have already been demonstrated in the courts? No. I'd say the great differentiator might be the way it is demonstrated by the licensees who signed up after having have had their lawyers look at it. Stew and I mention Microsoft, Thomson, AOL, et al with regard to Gemstar as being a lot more important in our minds than the track record in legalese. Similarly, I think it is important that Ericsson chose to avoid court because they knew the realities of that course of action. Moral of the story: Focus on the lengthy value chain avoiding court. The corollary is that VISX's value chain is a bunch of relatively small companies. In my mind, that kind of value chain doesn't validate the proprietary nature of the product nearly so much as an AOL, a Microsoft, or ... you get the point. --Mike Buckley