doni...

I agree with B-LUNIST...

Sometimes, your posts go out of their way to sound cryptic?...

You pose the following question:...

"Is leveraging for the future the name of the game.....or law suits?"...

I do not see it as an either/or situation. Law suits are a means of "Leveraging for the future." In fact that was the essence of my post, to which you were responding.

I was asserting that EDIG tried to get it's Tech. out there a la Qualcom, first by trying to hug TI, SAMSUNG, IBM, MSFT, HP, SANDISK, SONY, INTEL, (well you can add your list of names), as "Partners", hoping to generate DEMAND for its tech. It did not work for many reasons, the least important of which was the crash of the tech buble in March of 2000.

Then they tried to become a retail widget producers and they almost landed in Bankruptcy Court.

After that they shifted their focus to hitting home runs with single OEMS, the most successful and notorious of which was the deal with the ROUND ONE that ended in a messy law suit.

By the time Digecor fiasco ended the management of EDIG faced the fact the clock was ticking on the time for the patents, and they had decide how to achieve their goal of being the Qualcom of digital data tranmission era they chose law suits, and through "settlements" which include terms for cross-licensing, which is another way of saying "leveraging for the future", and being "agnostic".

Lastly, your understanding of the role of the judge in the upcoming Markman Hearing is flawed at best.

Judge Krieger does not decide the "total meaning of the patents at issue" as you posit. Her role is that an umpire, an arbitrator. She, with the help of the best experts in the field, listens and reads all the evidence submitted by the parties to litigation, and within the confines of RULES established by precedents she decides which party's position is more reasoable. If that ends up with "chaging the total meaning of a patent" so be it. For in every law suit seeking damages there has to be an assessment of "Liability", without which there is no claim to be enforced.

Usually, both elements of a law suit, "Liability" and "Damges" are presented to the trier of the facts, be it a jury or a judge, to decide. However, in the highly technical arena of patent litigation often it became very confusing to lay persons such as you, me, and B-LUNIST sitting on a Jury and being subjected to three weeks of experts testimony sitting in a witness chair and going " WOWA; WOWA, WOWA".

That is why DM took the Markman case up to the Supreme Court and convinced them that it would be much better if the liability part of the litigation was handled by an experience Judge armed with her/his own set of experts to wade through technical scientific jargon and decide the issue of liability, leaving onlt the question of damages to a jusry to decide.

It is on this point that EDIG management shines. By choosing DM and convincing them to take case up on contingency bases they paid for all their "Sins" in the past in my view. For, every one know that having the right lawyer is half of winning your case...Lol...Lol...

Gil...

P.S. to B-LUNIST...Paul I hope this helps...