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Subject: The ''big picture'', near term and long term....
From ronran
PostID 448399 On Sunday, February 12, 2006 (EST) at 2:25:22 PM
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I spoke with Brian about the recent PR and the status of the litigation, and although I initially thought I would wait awhile to write these comments, I reconsidered in view of the possibilty that we could get a quick decision from Judge Jenkins. This is likely to be a long post, so please accept my apologies in advance.
As I have mentioned various times over the last couple of weeks, we are IMO at much the same juncture, by analogy, as we were last summer prior to the Higgins ruling. People are getting pumped up and excited, we are seeing stock price estimates of several dollars, and everyone is just waiting for the ship to come in because many have deemed it a foregone conclusion that the case will stay in Texas. All of this could certainly happen and I want to be the first guy in line if it does --- but I remember the gnashing of teeth when the Higgins debacle occurred, so I thought discussing these issues now, and in what I consider to be the appropriate context, might provide some perspective.
First, it is NOT a good thing IMO that Judge Ward in Texas has agreed to either ''stay'' or ''defer''. More on this in a moment, but even those two terms mean different things --- ''stay'' means ''wait and see'', while ''defer'' means that Judge Ward intends, in effect, to be bound by the decision of the California court. I have not seen the actual language used but neither is great for PTSC, although I must say that this is not unexpected --- the cases did start out in California, PTSC is located in that venue, and speaking just from common sense, there probably are more ''contacts'' of the type required by law in California than in Texas. Many of you will recall my comment, back when the Texas case was first filed, that we would see challenges from the defendants on these issues.
How will the California court rule? I surely do not know. It could well be, as with many federal judges, that Judge Jenkins merely sees a chance to clear up a docket and send the ''problem'' elsewhere --- on the other hand, California courts are normally ''big business friendly'' in the tech arena (otherwise, the J4 wouldn't be fighting to get these cases back there), so perhaps that will be a factor. As always, we shall see.
What I can tell you without any hesitation is that, even if we get an unfavorable ruling on this particular issue, that does NOT mean that the case has been lost on the infringement issue --- it simply means that we will be moving forward in California. In and of itself, while not as good as being in Texas, litigating in California also does NOT automatically mean that PTSC will lose --- our attorneys, Townsend & Townsend, are very well respected there, and the case will ultimatley be decided by a jury, not by Judge Jenkins.
But let's move even farther forward and make some other unfavorable assumptions --- let's assume, just hypothetically, that Patriot does lose the case in California and that the J4 get off ''scott free''. What happens then? Well, that certainly wouldn't be a wonderful thing, but remember --- just because such a result would mean that the J4 didn't infringe, it would have NOTHING to do with the other 140+ alleged infringers that are still out there. And likely, at least some of those other alleged infringers could probably be sued outside California, perhaps in Texas or even at another venue of PTSC's choice.
So, the bottom line is that, if Judge Jenkins or some other California judge rules against PTSC on this threshold issue, the negative perception will almost undoubtedly send the stock price down, a la' the Higgins scenario --- there is really no factual reason why that should occur, but it probably will, since in the markets, perception controls over reality. The good news is that, if such a thing occurs,
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