Saturday, April 19, 2014

These Aren’t The Patent Trolls You’re Looking For | TechCrunch

These Aren’t The Patent Trolls You’re Looking For | TechCrunch:

Wow this is a great analysis/discussion of Patent Trolls.

This is a great discussion of the companies that exercise their IP rights and ways in which they do so. IBM invents a lot (patents) but doesn't directly utilize most of their inventions directly. Plus, even if they do, they often have peripheral uses of the technology where licensing out is a great way to commercialize.

As we often tell clients, you can license key technologies -- especially exclusive licensing for your product -- to control the market.  You don't actually have to invent it.

Kravets does not necessarily propose mechanisms to address "ethical" commercialization from the "unethical" patent trolls.

Maybe that is his next article?

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Friday, April 11, 2014

Courthouse News: Marvell at this. $1.17B x 3 is almost Comic!

Courthouse News Service:

A chip maker, Marvel Technology Group, just lost a $1.17B law suit for stealing the technology of Carnegie Mellon University.

One has to marvel at this company's antics, a company that trades by the symbol MRVL, and should in no way be confused with the comic company, although its antics carry both intrigue and humor.

You might call them the Chip Pirates of the Caribbean given their off-short headquarters in Bermuda. Their not chip makers, they are chip takers. [Insert poker chip puns here.]

The settlement as to the $1.17B law suit is still to be determine. Because of the willful and continued infringement, MRVL is subject to treble damages of $3.51B. (Half of the current market cap.) Plus they now are required to license the technology that they "borrowed" for so many years at a whopping $.50 per $2 chip sold which will chip away at the profits. The royalty payments are probably 25% of the company's profits.

I like that MRVL's own chips -- in infringed chips -- were the but of jokes internally. Because you wouldn't want to use them in any electronic devise, the next best use for them is as "coffee warmers"!:-)

Even though there have been penalties and sanctions by the SEC, these rouge execs are still in power and still making big salaries.

However, shareholders have taken up a class law suit against the execs Satardja and Dai, attesting: "damages for breach of fiduciary duty, failure to maintain adequate controls, and unjust enrichment and breach of duty of honest services"

This is the story line from crime-fighting comic books. One has to marvel at it!

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Friday, April 4, 2014

PWC, What you get when there's too much Booz in the baby naming process.

I fear that PWC was boozing it up a little too much when the rebranded their subsidiary to be now called: "Strategy &".  And what, you ask?

Booz & Co is a buyout subsidiary of Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC), the large accounting/consulting firm. It seems only right that the division with the boozy name should be revamped as something else, Right? But, in a drunken stupor, they couldn't really come up with what the division will do.

Actually this kind of a trick appears like an emerging pattern for PWC when they have an asset (division) that they are planning to sell or spin off. In this case the buyer of Booz & Co and determine what the "and" is themselves.

If they were going to use some strange code name for the spin-off target, they could have used something like April First, or Monday. Oops, no can't use Monday, already did that.

Check out the story here: http://www.accountancyage.com/aa/news/2337955/pwc-completes-acquisition-of-booz-co 
Or here: WSJ article

The STEM shortage: Crisis or myth? | Spring 2014

The STEM shortage: Crisis or myth? | Spring 2014:

Wow, give a look at this on STEM jobs and education. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education).

So how do we (u.s.a) stem the STEM shortage?

This is an interesting article about the STEM PIPELINE that has a lot of leaking
couplings. 

This is an original article in UoP's Faculty Matters magazine.

Keywords: school, university, training, innovation,  STEM, jobs, economic development,
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