Licensing payments now is a double edge sword. We need the money to keep the doors open and to pay the exuberant wages of the BOD. Once the patents are secure we will look back at the licensing of today and realize that we let some big fish get away. Just for curiosity I took a look at Intel.
December-2005-Even as the volume of outsourcing is likely to rise, Intel is planning to keep itself out of this trend. This is because Intel is one of only two chip-manufacturing companies (the other is Samsung) that sell more than $30 billion in chips annually, and with this revenue strength, it can afford to keep its processes in-house. http://www.blogsource.org/2005/12/intels_annual_s.html
Lemelson had been granted damage awards for the non-willful infringement of his patent on a
coupling technology used by Mattel, Inc. in one of the corporation’s toy trucks. Mr. Lemelson tried to
prove that Mattel, Inc. had willfully infringed on his patent, and in accordance with US law he sought
to be reimbursed with a triple licensing fee. Mr. Lemelson’s idea of multiple damages at the appellate
court was denied; however, the single royalty rate he was granted for the inadvertent (!) infringement
by Mattel, Inc. still amounted to 24,780,000 US$. The royalty rate was calculated using the standard
remedy calculations for royalty rates as a standard 4.5% industry percentage of all truck toy sales of
Mattel, Inc. between 1971 and 1986.
http://tim-kommission.de/fachtagungen/2006/unterlagen/Reitzig_Henkel_Heath_On_Sharks_Trolls_And_Their_Patent_Prey_Paper.pdf
Intel sold 30 billion dollars worth of processors in 2005.
Since its time consuming to track down every year say, on average Intel sold 20 billion dollars in processors for the last 15 years. Since our patents are only part of what make a processor functional factor a royalty payment of 3% not the industry standard of 4.5%.
That means that Intel could have paid 600,000,000 X 15 years. 9 billion dollars. Some one may want to check the old PR’s but I don’t think they paid us that much.
Add to that a licensing to all of Intel’s customers
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/06-937
A patent license agreement between LGE and Intel allowed Intel to use LGE's patents but required Intel to notify its customers, including Quanta, that its license did not extend to third-party purchasers' combinations of Intel and non-Intel components.
We are missing the boat getting licensing fees now.
