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Technology Stocks : Trimble Navigation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SKIP PAUL who wrote (2730)	8/27/1998 12:49:00 PM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3506

Adobe - There was an article in the journal today about Adobe's problems. Relevance to Trimble is the Adobe's Top management's commitment to technically excellent products without watching what the market really needed at the moment. Arun

To: SKIP PAUL who wrote (2730)	8/27/1998 3:55:00 PM
From: Yin Shih	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3506

I'm thinking more of the investment in product development versus patents. A strong patent portfolio is important and a byproduct of an extensive R&D program. But a $1M investment in building a 3 channel receiver product that also resulted in a patent still wouldn't have paid for itself if it only sold say $2M before 5, 8 or 12 channel receivers were needed to be competitive. The patent derived could block others from using that technique or entering that market, but I haven't seen strong evidence of any exclusionary patents yet. A high-turnover in product offerings (and TRMB's is pretty high) means high development expense. Using the patents in the next generation still requires more development expense. Since no outsider has a breakdown on the return on individual products versus development expense, there is no way to know what fraction of the total R&D expense over the years is now devalued. But even looking at the patent portfolio, my own experience is that some of those will be devalued also, as techniques used for one product generation don't always carry over to the next. Also, as patents have a limited life there is always some devaluation there over time.