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Technology Stocks : Identix (IDNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brad greene who wrote (9090)	7/3/1998 12:04:00 PM
From: David	Respond to of 26039

The state of the IDX versus DBII AFIS live scan competition . . . . I was recently corrected on the Yahoo! IDX board by ndTOTO2, a DBII employee, concerning the sale of one Ohio live scan unit: messages.yahoo.com@m2.yahoo.com He contends that this is a DBII sale. It may well be, given his inside information, although it was reported in the press as an IDX sale. This leads to a more interesting discussion of the IDX/DBII war for the live scan AFIS market, which is clearly being won by IDX (subject only to DBII's patent appeal case). In the early days, DBII was a market leader in this area, and IDX was the also-ran. Then IDX introduced the TP-600. Since then, the positions have reversed. DBII is now an also-ran. In response, and probably out of necessity, DBII sued IDX for patent infringement. IDX has won in the trial court and has the odds on its side in the now-overdue appeal decision. The machines are different in how they handle the imaging -- there is no dispute about that -- but DBII would like its patent to be construed to cover any kind of electronic "rolling" of fingerprints. In addition, DBII has been involved in police department by police department lobbying in a few areas of the country, alleging that the TP-600 is a poorer quality machine. Both machines are accredited by the FBI, which is one, more objective measure of quality. Another measure is sales figures, in which the TP-600 just crushes the DBII Tenprinter. While DBII has a few isolated victories, such as occasional sales in Ohio or part of the NEC Indiana win, IDX is starting to take State after State. I think IDX just got its Georgia win at DBII's expense, for instance. IDX is also having much greater success with federal agencies; there is no sign that DBII has much hope of getting an INS contract. That leaves DBII with a rather unsatisfactory conclusion that IDX must be lying, cheating or stealing to win contracts at DBII's expense. That's a pretty human reaction from people whose jobs are being threatened by a more successful competitor, but it's also just cheap slander. DBII is hanging in as an also-ran, but unless they can pull off a long-shot win in their court case, they are not a competitive threat to IDX in the AFIS market.