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Technology Stocks : EDTA (was GIFT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: River Rat who wrote (2146)	5/15/1998 9:26:00 AM
From: Al Dorsa	Respond to of 2383

A patent attorneys opinion: >>As they say, it is not the end of the story. Far from it. Even if the judge dismisses the action, the plaintiffs (E-Data, etc) will most likely appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears all patent appeals, and that court will review the claim construction DE NOVO, which means with no deference given to the district judge's construction. Since the district judge did not hold a Markman hearing, there are no facts for the appeals court to be concerned with, and so it is free to construe the claims as it sees fit. In fact, the plaintiffs will hope the judge dismisses the action, since they can then immediately appeal. If not, then they have to either ask the court for permission to appeal, or await the outcome of a trial on the merits using the judge's claim construction. It will be at least a year before the appeal is decided, most likely, and then things will be more clear. In the meantime, things are in legal limbo, and the stock is unlikely to move much. However, if it should go way down, like to $0.25 per share, it would be worth while, I think, to buy a few hundred shares, just on speculation. Most likely, from what I have seen, the Federal Circuit is likely to come up with a similarly narrow claim construction, but it is hard to tell about them. The big problem with the Federal Circuit is that there are only a few patent attorneys on the court, so the others are just regular lawyers who don't know squat about technical stuff, and have never practices patent law. So they are a bit unpredictable. But they are not at all shy about reversing a district court's claim construction. They do it all the time, and really screw things up for some people.<<