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Technology Stocks : Booking Holdings (formerly Priceline) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: B. A. Marlow who wrote (1283)	5/13/1999 3:18:00 AM
From: Gerald Walls	Respond to of 2743

So PCLN's on the cusp of a massive opportunity to bring supply and demand into reasonable balance, especially in segments where inventory is commodity-price sensitive, inflation- or interest-rate sensitive, or "perishable." Anyone who fails to see this train coming risks getting run over. The game is PCLN's to lose. While I agree that the Internet will crush retailer margins, primarily due to the ease of comparison shopping using price-search engines, I don't believe that PCLN's patents will hold up in a meaningful way. I mean that while they may be ruled valid, they'll probably be narrowed in such a way as to cover a specific implementation method which can be worked around without much trouble, making them into a dime-a-dozen e-tailer like VUSA (which I currently own). Remember, it only takes an instance of prior art to invalidate a patent. Do you think that someone in the past may have unsuccessfully ran a computer-bulletin-board-based name-your-own-price service? This would invalidate a patent based on using an electronic network to run a reverse auction, wouldn't it? I believe that if PCLN is successful in their model their patents will be challenged by those with deep enough pockets to carry it through to the bitter end, say, MSFT or AMZN.