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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace.com -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhg_in_kc who wrote (1539)	3/13/2000 12:13:00 AM
From: A.L. Reagan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3070

Thanks jhg - confirms what I always thought and dovetails with the suggested "how to proceed" in #1535. So, Stuart, please no more "Content is King, INSP is the King of Content" misinfo. JHG has established that INSP owns no content. INSP IR agrees with Spytrdr's blunt comments that the phone books, horoscopes, recipes, restaurant guides, etc. are in fact only commodities. Now that the content issue is put to rest we can concentrate on the patent claims, what they cover, how defensible they are, and what the Yahoos, AOL's, Oracles, Microsofts and a jillion other smaller players are bringing to the wireless web donneybrook. INSP's IR has been helpful in framing the scope of what we should be looking at. I'll email this gal for the "investor kit" (rather than emailing my doubts directly to Naveen as Guy Fleming suggested). Be interesting to learn how, in just a few short months, INSP has transformed itself from a content aggregator into a wireless software juggernaut and leap-frogged all these other guys who have been working on this stuff for years. I suspect that once we get into it, most of these patent claims will turn out to be for "business processes" like Amazon's "one-click", Priceline's reverse auction format, etc. as opposed to traditional "real technology." This whole area of business process IPR is one of turbulent litigation at present, and the degree to which these kinds of patents are actually enforceable in different circumstances is an unresolved area. (The Priceline & Amazon business process patents essentially got through back when the world wasn't paying nearly as much attention to this area as it is now.) Since there is apparently only one actual patent approved, and the others are just applications, you can bet your life the "pendings" are likely to be fought tooth and nail. And if it turns out there really is any IPR of value here, INSP, or anyone else with "business process" patents, will need to invest a ton of money prosecuting infringement cases. Keep in mind folks, that you are pinning practically all your money on the one patent "approved" (which may not even be actually issued). For $25 billion, it better be a doozy! Thanks again jhg for confirming the facts.