Pop! Technology: Who’s taking care of your food?
If you are planning on acquiring a very expensive bottle of wine, wouldn’t you want to know what temperature the bottle was stored at? Pop! Technology is a company with an interesting product. It uses RFID to record variations of temperature of a product as it makes its way through the distribution maze.
The really nice part is that the temperature history is actually recorded on a thermally sensitive bar code and can be read by UPC scanners, say, the ones at grocery stores. The implications for technology like this can be huge in the areas of food, beverage and pharmaceutical storage.
iPhone - a few (color coordinated) widgets needed
Guess who is opening up its platform - yes, the very last company that would come to mind - one that’s synonymous with “proprietary” - Apple! The company that taught us that function must follow form, and used color as their competitive differentiation, is now releasing an SDK (software development kit) so that anyone can build an application for the iPhone!
The release of the iPhone SDK is slated for February of 2008 (in June of 2007 they announced that they would Apple would start supporting 3rd party applications built to Web 2.0 standards). Their current suite of web 2.0 apps include Twitter, Facebook and Mundu. No doubt there will be a big rush to build widgets once they officially launch the new platform.
One thing is clear though, no matter what the application, the icon color better be just right!
Patent Auction - $2M bid fails to meet reserve, several sold for $1M+
I have written about the value of a patent portfolio to a company before (see here and here); some of the value comes from the inherent technology, some of it comes from being able to block your competitor from doing something, and at times the value of the patent comes from the perceived advantage it gives the company. All of them are valid reasons to acquire and build a decent patent portfolio.
Lately, a lot of people have cautioned that in their opinion, patents are not worth as much. Some recent changes in the Patent Law have provided additional reasons for people to argue that the inherent value of the patent is going down.
I do not agree with that assertion; at least not completely. There may be some valuation variance that will happen because of the recent changes in the patent law, but going forward, the patents will continue to provide strong offensive and defensive tools to succeed in the market place.
An easiest and clearest way to establish the real value of something is to examine some recent transactions, especially when the transactions are “clean” and not encumbered by fuzzy relationships between the parties, and the agreements are not entered into under duress of a lawsuit, and are not undertaken for tax mitigation reasons. An open auction provides such a valuation tool, and is a superb guide to establish the real value of an asset.
There is no Ebay for patents, but there are several companies that specialize in the IP brokerage business. I have dealt with most of them in one capacity of other.
Yesterday, Ocean Tomo, one of the major IP asset brokers, held an open auction in Chicago. There were about 400 patents and applications spread out amongst roughly 70 lots.
Highlights:
- One of the lots, which has 3 patents and several other pending applications related to GPS location based system and logistics, got a bid of $2M+ but failed to sell because it did not meet the reserve price. The auctioneer’s estimate was about $5M.
- Online ticketing system patent went for $1.00M (estimate was $2.2M)
- Digital Media System and management patent went for $1.75M
- Computer interface device patent went for $750k.
- Several others sold for $500k+
- About 50% of the patents sold, which is typical.
Generally, after the auction is over, and for patents that did not meet the reserve price, there is some negotiation between the patent owners and the interested parties; so the total revenue realized from this patent auction will exceed the previous auction amount of $10M.
While the overall perceived value of patents might see some reduction because of the change in the patent law, there is still a healthy demand for innovative technologies and the competitive advantages they can provide in the marketplace.
Microsoft and Facebook: Mark Zukerberg gets his way
It is confirmed, Microsoft is in, Google is out. As we mentioned yesterday, Microsoft has announced that it is investing $240 million in Facebook, at a valuation of $15 billion!
This puts the current Microsoft stake in Facebook at 1.6% which is much less than the 5% stake that Microsoft was initially considering. We had written on September 24th, that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was “pushing for a whopping 15 billion valuation” for the Facebook site. Looks like this round has gone to Mark!
So Mark Zukerberg got his $15 billion valuation for Facebook, but it is not clear if Microsoft reduced the amount that they had planned to invest in the company or whether the 15% share that they had planned on acquiring was based on a lower valuation of $1.6 B. If that were the case, then indeed, Facebook got a a very good deal.
There has been much said about Mark “Zuke” Zukerberg’s spurning of lucrative offers for Facebook, but certainly a lot of credit has to be given for the fact that he has managed to grow the company into the 5th largest Internet presence, right behind the likes of Google, Ebay, Yahoo and Amazon.
Microsoft will begin serving targeted ads to Facebook’s 20 million active users (their user base has been growing by 3% a month). While Google has been spurned by Facebook, they will probably not be sitting still for long. They already have an advertising network deal signed with MySpaces’ parent company Fox Interactive Media, to serve ads to the 100 million MySpace members. One wonders if there is are any ownership discussions in the offing….
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Myspace, ad network, social network
Tags : facebook, google, Mark Zuckerberg, microsoft, myspace
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