Is everyone motivated by greed, I'd like to believe not.
posted on
May 25, 2012 02:03PM
From the Agility Website Creative. We value creativity and customize our services to meet your specific needs. "One size fits all" simply doesn't apply, and we demonstrate this daily through our commitment to flexible fees, creative scheduling and unique partnerships. Agility IP Law approaches every matter in a spirit of genuine partnership. As such, we work closely with our clients to design billing arrangements that allow flexibility and deliver results. You'll be pleasantly surprised to discover highly competitive hourly billing rates that maximize your investment. Plus, we're sensitive to your needs and budget; we'll work with you to develop creative fee structures including fixed, subscription, success, contingency and modified contingency fee arrangements, to name just a few. (emphasis by me) Think about this. If you were Jim Otteson (Agility) would you consider a contingency fee arrangement (if that is what they did) with TPL in matters concerning the MMP when presently there are and have been other partners suing Leckrone for things like fraud and breach of contract? More importantly, in Moore’s case, there is the question of who owns the MMP? What would be the motivation for Agility to push hard for the success of the MMP when its very ownership is in question?
Agility is also representing TPL with its USITC complaints for its other patent portfolios which have numerous license agreements publicized as of the last few months. It would appear from Alliacense PRs that money might be rolling in for TPL from its other patent portfolios, in which case, Agility may be paid well, on a contingency basis, for its efforts on behalf of those portfolios.
Was Leckrone waiting for PTSC to get desperate enough to cave in to the most recent settlement agreement, which apparently, has not increased the frequency of MMP license agreements compared to the number of infringers, we have been told, have been on notice for years. Yet, PTSC agreed to the change in attorneys and the up front money required to retain Agility. How can we be certain that this was not yet some creative way to convince PTSC's BoD to pay fees that really are covering the attorney fees for other portfolios that are being licensed.Was Leckrone’s plan to get one monkey off his back while he tries to settle with the others? If so, his plan worked, at least with PTSC. If he is waiting for Brown, Marcoux and Moore to settle, he may be in for a long wait. Maybe those people are not motivated by greed but rather by principle and would prefer to see the business partner, who they believed wronged them, receive a spanking in court and a court award rather than a settlement agreement that may or may not ever be honored.
I hope that PTSC is monitoring all of these very carefully and that they contact Chuck Moore and apologize for throwing him under the bus and work with him, not against him, just in case Chuck wins his case.
PTSC is a company that produces NOTHING, sells NOTHING and its only source of income is licensing revenue solely generated by a partner it sued, for among other things, not making an effort to license.
If I made one appeal it would be to Cliff to let shareholders know how we may help him to implement changes to the existing BoD so that he is able to move forward with directors who put shareholders’ interests first.
Of course this is all just my opinion formed from information obtained from public documents.