It is interesting that TPL added that little blurb into their PR. The second part has been present for a while, but that first part about TPL submitting in the 80s and the market sectors affected is new. Wonder why. Does seem like they were emphasizing the auto sector especially.
Also, if you look at the Alpine PRs from Alliancense vs. PTSC, there is a discrepancy that seems interesting as well. First as I mentioned a week ago or so, PTSC includes AMD & Intel when it counts the total licenses signed, while TPL/Alliancense do not. I understand that those two happened early on and pre-unification of patents, but it seems as though they should get on the same page in PR's with that. I find it odd that they specifically DON'T PR that the same (PTSC's count is always 2 more than TPL/Alliacense). The other intersting point is that TPL/Alliacense omit DMP Electronics in their PR blurb of companies that have purchased MMP "Portfolio" licenses since they in fact purchase an "implementation" license. PTSC simply lists MMP Technology "licenses". I understand the differences and why technically the numbers differ, but I don't quite understand why these two companies (TPL/PTSC) would differentiate these seemingly minor semantical issues in their PR's. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
The one good thing that we can be certain of at least from these PR's is that Toshiba, Matsushita & NEC America PURCHASED MMP licenses. As you can see from Alliacense's Lite-On-It PR they state:
"Lite-On IT has become the 26th company to purchase an MMP License"
While in today's Verigy PR, they state:
"Since January 2006 over 30 global companies from the US, Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan have purchased MMP Portfolio licenses."
26 plus 2 (Alpine & Verigy) does NOT equal 30 or "over 30" so it's clear the settlements included the PURCHASES of MMP licenses.