Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Netscape -- Giant Killer or Flash in the Pan? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (2922)	4/27/1998 9:29:00 PM
From: P.M.Freedman	Respond to of 4903

Mike Homer, VP of Netscape, claimed on H&Q Tech Conference today that Netscape has 56.6% of whole browser market shares.

To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (2922)	4/27/1998 11:51:00 PM
From: Jeff Jordan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4903

Monday April 27 1:18 PM EDT Netscape fends off Wang suit By Chris Oakes SAN FRANCISCO (Wired) - Netscape is crying out for a little geek love. Mozilla.org (http://www.mozilla.org) became the company's pipeline for soliciting a little technical assistance today. Netscape hopes that the developers who normally use Mozilla.org to contribute free source code will provide help as it tries to fend off a patent lawsuit filed against the company last October. According to Netscape, Wang has charged the browser company with violating a 1985 Wang patent by incorporating certain features in its browser, a patent which Netscape maintains is "noninfringed, unenforceable, and invalid." Netscape posted an announcement of the suit on the front page of Mozilla.org, reasoning that developers have as much to lose as the company from a successful suit. A Wang victory puts the source code at risk, so Netscape is asking for help to gather technical evidence proving that Wang's patent has no validity. According to Netscape officials, the suit charges the company with infringing on a patent that Wang holds for a videotext system in the Netscape browser. The functions affected include those that save Web pages from a server, bookmarks, and decoding documents based on the use of file extensions. Netscape cites several patented technologies that predate the Wang patent and therefore invalidate it. Such patents are known as "prior art," meaning they are similar enough to the new patent to invalidate claims by the inventor of uniqueness or originality. Netscape's list of prior art relevant to the case includes the Alto and Star computers from Xerox Parc, terminal emulators, and Telidon, Prestel, and Mupid, video-text systems used in the late '70s and early '80s. One San Diego attorney specializing in Internet software patent protection said that Wang's suit was unlikely to succeed because a company can't patent an idea, only an application of that idea. "If the stuff they were talking about -- bookmarks, the 'save as' function -- was patented (by Wang), (the patent) is going to get blown away," said David B. Himelstein. "Take bookmarks, for example. We have seen them before we got into the computer age, and the idea of calling something a bookmark because it's on a computer -- it's hard to see that as rights to an invention," Himelstein said. "I don't know what Wang is trying to do." The patent in question, according to Netscape, is US Patent number 4,751,669, called videotext frame processing, from Wang Laboratories. A patent database shows that it was filed in 1985 and issued in 1988.

To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (2922)	4/28/1998 7:10:00 PM
From: saju chacko	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4903

NSCP is revamping their business model i believe... that is finding a better way to make their money... part of this is redesigning their netcenter... which i believe is the page you get if you do an internet search using navigator.. NSCP plans on making netcenter something like YHOO... where you can access all the info you need and have a customized version for your own use... they might have things like scores for sports events, the weather, and financial info.. all of this will increase traffic and since they also have the browser for the internet, NSCP will be the standard for the internet... at least before YHOO... by doing this NSCP can charge more for others who want to be represented on NSCP's page... this is why the new deals with the search engines will have a profound effect on the success of NSCP... in short, mo money, mo money, mo money! Saju