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Technology Stocks : SILICON STORAGE SSTI Flash Mem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: docpaul who wrote (1791)	8/31/2001 3:13:19 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1881

docpaul--When a patent application is filed, the patent is then pending. A competitor could start selling a similar product during the period between the filing date and the approval date, but would be forewarned that royalties might still be payable once the patent is approved. A competitor would very likely not want to commit to a certain product that could infringe a patent applied for earlier. That would make little business sense. Take a look at the QUALCOMM case. A Chinese group working with Siemens has announced it has a workable broadband CDMA system known as TD-SCDMA, which is somewhat different from the other third generation CDMA systems based on technology initially developed by QUALCOMM. The Chinese system has limitations, in that it won't work in a fast moving vehicle. Even so, there is enough "prior art" in TD-SCDMA for China to realize that the moment it tries to sell devices using this system, QUALCOMM will file a legal challenge unless the seller has previously received a license from QUALCOMM. The M-Systems development you mentioned in your earlier post is an example of things to come. Not only will the hard disk drive become obsolete, but as you say, DRAM can be replaced by flash memory, eliminating the time to boot programs residing in long term storage. The only long term storage will be in the form of rewritable CD. It will be interesting to see which of the flash companies succeeds in turning the laptop into a general purpose, low power draw computer. The other element to be improved is the display itself. The most promising technology here seems to be something called Organic Light Emitting Diode, pioneered by Kodak, of all people, but implemented of course by the Japanese who have a knack for that sort of thing. OLED permits a display on a flexible sheet of plastic, with much lower current draw than the current LCD displays, and a much brighter picture as well. Kodak has a technology sharing agreement with Olympus involving the OLED. Art