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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Palmberg who wrote (18458)	9/24/1998 3:23:00 PM
From: Alomex	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 213177

I know the exact number... What my enquiring mind wants to know is if RoyBatty knows what he's talking about... Care to hazard a guess Mark?

To: Mark Palmberg who wrote (18458)	9/24/1998 8:25:00 PM
From: Adam Nash	Respond to of 213177

I bet Adam Nash has a pretty good idea. Of course whether he'll disclose any info is another matter.... Care to comment on the MSFT/AAPL patent question, Adam? Ha Ha, I bet Adam Nash just knows everything :) I wouldn't know off the top of my head, to be honest. I remember when the Microsoft patents came online at Apple, and we spent sometime reviewing them to see what we could find. The reality about patents is that vastly more of them are filed than are ever useful or applicable. Microsoft has a lot of research groups that are generating a lot of patents. I would not be surprised if MS is generating more than Apple at this point. However, the right patent can be worth more than the rest combined, if it is important enough. Someone estimated patent price at 1% of revenue, but that is completely arbitrary. I could deem my patent $1B to license, and that's it. Now, what law courts use to settle disputes, I'm not sure. Problem with patents is that all the big tech companies - Apple, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Cisco, MS, etc all have patents that are in the same domains, so an individual patent is usually pretty useless, unless it is the one that your product is violating. Blah Blah Blah. Software patent law is a murky mess in general. Now, if you want me to divulge specifics about the Apple/MS Patent licensing deal, sorry. I don't know any specifics, and even if I did I couldn't say. I have some pretty good conjecture, but it's probably a bad idea for me to commit it to writing in a public forum. I will say I am always impressed at Apple how often different groups push technology boundaries to come up with new ideas. I think it because Apple owns a platform not betrothed to someone else, which gives them the instinct to "think of something better than xxx" or "there is no reason we have to do it like xxx." For a while, people called this Apple's NIH syndrome, but these days people are more pragmatic. They still try to come up with the new & better way, but they won't do it unless they can demonstrate it really will be worth the change. Now, in the meantime, i am pretty happy with the Jan 35 Calls I picked up at 6. I'm hoping for alot when earnings are released.