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"In terms of the younger companies, what do you have to unwind exactly? What sorts of assets do they have to sell off? Things have definitely changed. I rememb
by eric-hu 15y ago
"In terms of the younger companies, what do you have to unwind exactly? What sorts of assets do they have to sell off?
Things have definitely changed. I remember in 1999, 2000, I would sell a used server for $35,000 and I had a line of people wanting it. Today, a server is $5,000 and you can get an okay server for less than $2,000. [In the meantime], we’ve probably become one of the largest sellers of [intellectual property] in the country. We sell tons of IP, and as you know, the IP wars have started, so we play with the big guys, the little guys, and the in-between guys. During the last bubble, there weren’t as many patents. It was more ideas and URLs. So the business has matured."
I hope this means that tech patents will prove to be a fad.
- sp332 15y agoIt reminds me a little of trading baseball cards. The cards were mostly worthless. But "Tops" published a book that basically defined what the cars were worth, and speculation was done based on what Tops might publish in the next edition. The market eventually collapsed. The same thing might happen with software patents, when people realize that there is no inherent value to owning a patent.