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Technology Stocks : VALENCE TECHNOLOGY (VLNC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Curtis who wrote (22260)	11/12/2000 11:50:06 AM
From: John Curtis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27311

Okay, I may have gotten a partial answer to my parenthetical aside query regarding those patents. A friend of mine; an attorney, sent this to me: ************ Our librarians are great. One of them just found the statute which states that patents for inventions expire 20 years after issuance of the patent. (It varies in the pharmaceutical industry). ************ So, it looks like VLNC's got, on average, another 15 years of life on those patents if the above holds true for such patents as theirs. This should be more than enough time to get entrenched, eh? ;-) John~

To: John Curtis who wrote (22260)	11/12/2000 11:07:05 PM
From: P. Ramamoorthy	Respond to of 27311

John, US patents - Old patents (pre-GATT agreement) were good for 17 years. After GATT, they are good for 20 years. European Common - They have their own rules. Bottom line - Lev said that he was not interested in suing infringement cases in every country (Korea, for example) where violation occurs. The usual strategy (which Lev might be following) is to block the product shipments to Europe or USA from those manufacturers. OEM's usually do not like to buy products of questionable license issues. Ram