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

To: augustus_mccray who wrote (44971)	7/27/2001 11:35:13 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

Gus, Interesting article in a limited scope, but I think the author is completely missing the mark on the far more important wider scope. If investors focus too closely on IPR, they're not looking at the truly sustainable, competitive advantages that leverage the IPR. My point is that the IPR by itself doesn't matter much unless it can be leveraged. That's the difference between Gorillas and the thousands of other high-tech companies that have IPR that isn't a leverageable advantage. The author mentioned that he was an investor in Rambus. But he didn't mention why. Did he really invest in Rambus because of the SDRAM IPR that took a hit in the recent court ruling? A lot of people invested in Rambus long before anyone around here had a hint that the company had a hope of collecting SDRAM royalty. If he invested before the first favorable ruling regarding SDRAM, he probably didn't have a reason to think Rambus was even trying to stake that claim. That being the case, why would he sell now, unless he feels the litigation costs are too much of a drain on the company. If he invested because of the initially favorable SDRAM court ruling, he was investing in an old technology and the company's ability to defend extremely late-coming claims to the IPR. Unless he's a technologist and supreme patent attorney all rolled into one, that's an exceptionally dangerous game that's not far from gambling. Seeing articles like that help me realize that so many tech investors really don't focus on the long-term, sustainable, competitive advantages. Anyone who thinks IPR is enough, doesn't understand what the real competitive advantages are in my opinion. --Mike Buckley