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

To: Ausdauer who wrote (19265)	2/23/2001 10:44:55 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Aus, you gave us a good rundown of possible reasons for not making any announcements regarding licensing and royalties. But we can eliminate at least a couple of the reasons: SNDK by law must disclose any news that can affect the stock price, and must disclose it in a timely manner. That would include any licensing agreements. The '987 patent has been enforced against Lexar, and much earlier against other competitors, including Samsung. With the legal precedent establishing the validity of SanDisk's '987 patent, any company would be crazy to think it could get around the patent, except by designing a product not based on that patent. The problem as I see it is the extent to which cross licensing agreements with companies including Toshiba and Intel make products using the '987 patent by those companies exempt from any royalty payments. Thus, the real question is whether SanDisk waived its right to any royalties from some of the major producers of flash memory. Another problem would occur if a third company had its own licensing agreement with either Intel or Toshiba, resulting in royalties or other payments to those companies and not to SanDisk. In any event, the company has not explained whether it still has proprietary technology with any value in the marketplace, or whether it has become simply another producer of a commodity product. Or maybe a little of both. Art