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Biotech / Medical : VISX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vector1 who wrote (499)	4/16/1998 1:47:00 PM
From: Jim Mac	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1754

There's a lot of confusion concerning exactly what FTC is trying to do. Here's the deal: Visx and Summit contributed all their respective patents to PPP, which then licenses all these patents back to Visx and Summit, which in turn sublicense the PPP patents to their users. FTC is seeking to stop this SUBLICENSING OF PPP PATENTS, because PPP is a patent pooling thing which FTC thinks is a monopolistic practice. FTC is NOT seeking to stop Visx and Summit from separately licensing their respective patents to respective users. FTC only want to stop the PPP pooling deal. FTC wants Visx and Summit to license users SEPARATELY, and collect fees on respective lasers without subsequently putting money into the PPP pot for later splitting. Is that clear, everyone?

To: Vector1 who wrote (499)	4/16/1998 10:26:00 PM
From: yosid	Respond to of 1754

You're preaching to the choir. I've always maintained that much of the success of this business would revolve around the royalty stream. You assume that VISX will be collecting those royalties. Here is news for you. There are arguments valid from many points of view that better lasers exist (Now) under testing that will soon be presented as alternatives to Visx's machines. If they are "dumped" on the market and can do the job, we'll see where the Visx market share will be after the assault. Look at Summit. Lots of cash - obsolete machines. They have no future unless they determine a way to maintain their current market share and do new business. Unless they acquire new technology, they lose. If you think it can't happen to Visx, we disagree.