Geoff IBM booked(s) custom software development as patent and IP revenue. By that definition Ness would have about 1BN revenue of revenue from IP but as we both know - Ness doesn't have any IP....
Buy the book on Amazon. Re your IBM friend, look up post-hoc error on Wikipedia d On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:52 PM, geoffrey mendelson < [email protected]> wrote: > > On Aug 13, 2009, at 2:49 PM, Danny Lieberman wrote: > >> >> For example - IBM began listing IP and licensing royalties in their >> annual financial reports beginning in 2000 - about $1.5billion +/- per year. >> The majority of the $1.5BN is value of IP sold off by IBM including IP held >> by divisions they sold off as well as custom-development revenue. The >> actual amount of revenue from their patent licensing program is far less - >> about $125M gross the cost of IBM's several hundred patent lawyers. >> > > > I just spoke to a former IBM employee who explained it to me. Since the > time of Lincoln, the US has a law where you can project the value of a > patent to the US government and if you dedicate it to the public, you can > get a tax write off of half of the value. > > So let's say you patent a way of improving performance of file systems. You > dedicate the patent to the public (people of the US) with a projected value > to the US government of 100 million dollars over the 15 year remaining life > of the patent. You end up with 50 million back (I assume in taxes you did > not have to pay). > > The question is what is the true value of that patent, both in prospective > licensing fees, derivative works, improvement in systems that would not > otherwise use it (BSD, Linux, Windows) and so on. Since there is usually > inflation and you have to claim current value dollars, the end result looks > like a big write-off, but if you had collected license fees it might have > been much more. For example, what if it would have gotten you a $1 for > every computer sold over the next 15 years, worldwide? > > It's not a myth, and it's easy to show how much they made for it, but it's > just speculation as to how much revenue they decided to forgo by doing so. > > Let's use a bad example. Microsoft patented the FAT file system. They > wanted to charge a $.25 license fee for each use. If they had done so when > other people first started to use it, they may have been able to. (that's > another discussion). So let's assume they did. Now project that over the > next 21- years the US government bought 1 billion computers that would have > had to pay the royalty. So they claimed the cost of patent to the US > government was $250M. > > They could have gotten $125M in a lump sum by dedicating the patent to the > public domain. Or they could have taken their chances and collected > royalties on the computers. So while Shachar calls the patent silly, I see > it as a goldmine which was poorly managed. > > Technicaly the FAT (and it's derivative's) support in Linux is a violation > of the GPL. It was patented before it was placed in the code, by a third > party, without a patent license or dedication of the patent to the public. > The fact that Microsoft did not persue infringment does not change the > reality of it. > > Remember that patents do not need to be enforeced to stay valid. All you > have to do is pay your annual fees. It is perfectly legal to let someone > infringe upon a patent and then sue them after they have enough value or > revenue to make it worth it. > > > Geoff. > > -- > geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM > Jerusalem Israel [email protected] > > > > > > -- Danny Lieberman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect your data: http://www.software.co.il Twitter: http://twitter.com/onlyjazz Skype: dannyl50 Warsaw:+48-79-609-5964 Israel: +972 8 9701485 Mobile: +972 - 54 447 1114
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