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Technology Stocks : VALENCE TECHNOLOGY (VLNC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tickertype who wrote (3672)	8/13/1998 10:50:00 AM
From: lws	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27311

Tickertype (and Mark Visnic too), I too was pleased to hear Lev mention the patent portfolio. One reason I felt a reasonable degree of safety in investing more and more in Valence over several years was the growth of its patent portfolio. On the Valence web site there is a list of the patents, although for some reason they no longer keep it updated (I hope its not updated...) . Scanning the dates of the patents, you will see an accelerating rate of patent grants. I took (and take) that to mean that the company was a serious research outfit making reasonable progress toward battery production. I realize that companies can manipulate patents to fool investors, and patents can be designed around or broken, or be expensive to defend, but all in all I thought it was a good sign. I figured that anyone else attempting to produce li-poly batteries (at least using the Bellcore process) would have to confront the same technical issues and hence be constrained by Valence's intellectual property rights. Lev confirmed this view yesterday. The safety factor I thought the patents embodied had to do with the value of Valence in bankruptcy. Valuing such intellectual property rights is difficult at best, and, I suspect, especially difficult in circumstances like this, where they pertain to the production of a product recognized as potentially very valuable but not yet capable of being produced. Still, to someone wanting to get into production, they would be quite valuable. All in all, I figured it likely the stock price did not (and does not) reflect their true value. In bankruptcy, however, I thought they would be the most valuable asset available for sale. I figured they offered a bit of downside protection to the stock -- and I still feel this way. No doubt bankruptcy claimants will capture most of their value (the IRS, the NI government, the lawyers, the employees, lenders, suppliers, etc.), but I am still inclined to think there would be a bit left over for us common stock shareholders too. How much? Not much, I suspect, -- but hopefully we'll never find out, either!