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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NHP who wrote (5814)	5/26/1999 6:04:00 PM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

NHP, I agree. Suits like this can go either way. for example... The Microsoft Windows GUI does not share the same "look and feel" of the Apple GUI. How did they ever pull that one off??? Ausdauer

To: NHP who wrote (5814)	5/26/1999 6:39:00 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

NHP, you're probably right that Lexar is whistling Dixie, but as we all know, starting a lawsuit can be very, very expensive. Why go to the time and expense of filing if you know you're going to lose? You could even receive court sanctions if the suit turns out to be frivolous. I would guess that Lexar's complaint is designed to soften up SanDisk and perhaps gain some bargaining power in regard to the litigation already in process. Maybe Lexar thinks that some of SanDisk's marketing and other claims could be a cause of legal action. Maybe they hope that, rather than spend a lot of time, energy, and money, SanDisk will prefer to make some out of court settlement, perhaps allowing Lexar to get off the hook on its other litigation. The proper response to such conniving is to hire the best litigator and send these guys a message that they aren't going to get anything, and probably are going to lose something. It's a lot like Kodak and Polaroid, as you point out, but if my memory serves me correctly, based on conversations I had many years ago with my uncle, who was a communications lawyer in Washington, the RCA - Armstrong FM patent situation was different. Armstrong, if I recall correctly, gave his FM patents to the industry. RCA saw the threat to its dominance of AM and so tried mightily to prevent people from wanting to use FM. One of the ways they used was to make a cheap FM radio that had the annoying characteristic of "drifting" off the frequency. People didn't appreciate that performance and were motivated to continue buying AM radios until Zenith came out with a really good AM-FM table radio, and that really got FM started. Art