Patriot Scientific der Highflyer 2006
Patriot Scientific Names Clifford Flowers as Chief Financial Officer
CARLSBAD, Calif. – September 17, 2007 – Patriot Scientific (OTC Bulletin Board: PTSC) announced today that Clifford L. Flowers has joined the company as its new Chief Financial Officer. Flowers brings with him 18 years of progressive and diversified experience managing public corporations including startups, turnarounds and established organizations.
“I’m pleased and delighted to have Cliff join our management team as CFO,” said Patriot Scientific President and CEO Jim Turley. “He’s both experienced and creative and will become a vital asset as we move the company forward along our new path of growth and acquisition.”
Flowers said, “I am excited about this challenge and eager to assist in assessing new opportunities for Patriot as it begins to focus on acquisitions. I believe the company is poised for significant growth and I look forward to bringing Patriot’s assets to fruition for the benefit of its shareholders.”
Prior to joining Patriot Scientific Flowers was VP of Finance and CFO at Financial Profiles, a subsidiary of The Hannover Insurance Group. He was also CFO at XiFin, a high-tech software company in San Diego, and CFO of Previo (formerly Stac Electronics), a computer-storage company. His accounting experience includes eight years with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
Flowers succeeds Thomas J. Sweeney, who has been acting as Patriot’s interim CFO for the past 26 months. Sweeney oversaw Patriot Scientific’s transition into its current business structure and managed the company’s complex Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts.
About Patriot Scientific
Patriot Scientific is a leading intellectual-property licensing company that develops, markets, and enables innovative technologies that satisfy the demands of fast-growing markets for wireless devices, smart cards, home appliances, network gateways, set-top boxes, entertainment technology, automotive telematics, biomedical devices, industrial controllers and more. Headquartered in Carlsbad, Calif., information about the company can be found at http://www.ptsc.com.
An investment profile on Patriot Scientific may be found at http://www.hawkassociates.com/ptscprofile.aspx. Copies of Patriot Scientific press releases, current price quotes, stock charts and other valuable information for investors may be found at http://www.hawkassociates.com and http://www.americanmicrocaps.com. To receive free e-mail notification of future releases for Patriot Scientific, sign up at http://www.hawkassociates.com/email.aspx.
# # #
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this news release looking forward in time involve risks and uncertainties, including the risks associated with the effect of changing economic conditions, trends in the products markets, variations in the company's cash flow, market acceptance risks, patent litigation, technical development risks, seasonality and other risk factors detailed in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
PTSC is a trademark of Patriot Scientific Corporation. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Ist ein gutes Zeichen wenn die Optionen eingelöst werden.
Cliff Flowers
Interim Chief Financial Officer
Cliff Flowers, interim chief financial officer, joined BakBone in May 2007 and is responsible for the day-to-day accounting and finance activities, human resources, planning and budgeting, treasury, legal and contracts for the company. Most recently, Cliff was senior vice president of finance and operations and CFO for Financial Profiles, Inc., a developer and marketer of software for the financial planning industry. Prior to joining Financial Profiles, Cliff served as CFO of Xifin, Inc., a provider of hosted software services to the commercial laboratory marketplace. Prior to Xifin, Cliff served for nine years in positions of increasing responsibility at Previo, Inc., a developer and marketer of various PC and server-based products, including backup and business continuity offerings. As CFO of Previo, Cliff’s global responsibilities included all financial operations and legal affairs. He earlier served as an audit manager with Price Waterhouse, LLP. Cliff is a graduate of San Diego State University with a B.S. summa cum laude in Business Administration with an emphasis in accounting and holds a CPA license in California.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
MARSHALL DIVISION
Technology Properties Limited and Patriot
Scientific Corporation,
Plaintiffs,
v.
Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co., Ltd.,
Panasonic Corporation of North America, JVC
Americas Corporation, NEC Electronics
America, Inc., Toshiba Corporation, Toshiba
America, Inc., Toshiba America Electronic
Components, Inc., Toshiba America
Information Systems, Inc. and Toshiba America
Consumer Products, LLC,
Defendants.
JURY DEMANDED
PLAINTIFFS' REPLY IN SUPPORT OF MOTION TO STRIKE DEPOSITION
TESTIMONY OF WILLIS E. HIGGINS, ESQ., AND EXHIBITS
A party that has taken extraordinary measures to exclude attorney-client privileged evidence does not waive the privilege, as defendants suggest, by failing to seal that evidence once it has been decisively ruled inadmissible. "mplied waiver requires a careful weighing of facts and 'should not be applied cavalierly.'" United States v. Desir, 273 F.3d 39, 46 (1st Cir. 2001) quoting In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 219 F.3d 175, 186 (2d Cir. 2000). In particular, a "[c]ourt cannot justify finding a waiver of privileged information merely to provide the opposing party information helpful to its [case] or because [the] information is relevant." Remington Arms Co. v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 142 F.R.D. 408, 415 (D. Del. 1992). Courts have not found a waiver where the party attacking the privilege has not been prejudiced. The great weight of authority holds that the attorney-client privilege is waived when a litigant places information protected by it in issue through some affirmative act for his own benefit, and to allow the privilege to protect against disclosure of such information would be manifestly unfair to the opposing party." Conkling v. Turner, 883 F.2d 431, 434 (5th Cir. 1989). Upon careful analysis, the district court in Northern California ruled Higgins's testimony inadmissible in 2005. The Federal Circuit affirmed that decision in 2006. Defendants have not shown anything Charles Moore has done since then--expressly or impliedly--that could fairly be interpreted as waiving the privilege that should have protected his communications with Higgins. Neither have they shown how the public's being able to read some of the statements that were ruled inadmissible in 2005 makes those statements admissible now in 2007. Finally, defendants have not shown that they would suffer a jot of prejudice if this Court required them to make their defense without resort to Higgins's improper statements and testimony.
I. DEFENDANTS HAVE NOT CITED ANY AUTHORITY THAT SUPPORTS
THEIR THEORY OF WAIVER
Having evidently searched the law of every jurisdiction, defendants have found no authority to support their argument that Charles Moore waived the privilege protecting his communications with Higgins, or acquiesced in Higgins's unilateral decision to disclose Moore's confidences or challenge his interests. Each of the three cases they cite presents a perfectly intuitive waiver scenario in which a defendant either shared his secrets with a third party who was not obliged to maintain their confidentiality (United States v. Ryans, 903 F.2d 731 (10th Cir. 1990)); divulged privileged information in one circumstance and tried to reclaim the privilege later in another circumstance (In re Lorazepam & Clorazepate Antitrust Litigation, 2001 WL 1795665 (D.D.C. July 17, 2001))1; or sat idly by while his attorney testified in open court as to 1 In re Lorazepam & Clorazepate Antitrust Litigation, 2001 WL 1795665 (D.D.C. July 17, 2001) an unpublished order of a magistrate judge in Washington, D.C., denying a motion to compel the testimony of an attorney, actually says nothing about this case. While it states "The attorneyclient privilege can be waived by any actions of the client which are inconsistent with an intention to keep the communication shielded by the privilege confidential," Id. at *2, it does not suggest what actions might waive the privilege. More illuminating--and quite unhelpful to
defendants' opposition--are the two cases the order cites to support the quoted sentence, In re Continued on the next page all manner of secrets and confidences (GFI, Inc. v. Franklin Corp., 265 F.3d 1268 (Fed. Cir. 2001)). None of those things happened here. Ryans is inapposite because Charles Moore volunteered his confidences to no one other than Higgins, who, he had every reason to believe, would maintain them in secret because the law of every jurisdiction required (and still requires) him to do so. Unfortunately for (and unbeknownst to) Moore, Higgins later purported to share Moore's confidences with third parties adverse to Moore's interests. There was nothing Moore could have done to prevent Higgins's hair-raising ethical breaches, but, upon learning of them, he not only immediately and successfully moved to prevent their propagation in court, he moved to disqualify the three law firms that had encouraged (and paid for) Higgins's misconduct. Moore's decisive action at that juncture brought the inventorship case to a screeching halt because, without Higgins's wholly improper testimony, Patriot had no "case". Defendants suggest that Moore has "not shown any interest in safeguarding the alleged confidentiality" of his communications with Higgins, Defendants' Opposition, p. 1, but they completely overlook the facts that Moore moved to bar Higgins's testimony, and he successfully litigated his claims of privilege and breach-of-fiduciaryduty all the way through judgment and appeal. In re Lorazepam is irrelevant because plaintiffs have not tried to use the privilege as a sword and shield. Rather, they maintain that none of Higgins's testimony regarding inventorship is proper or relevant to this case, and because they have never cited Higgins's statements for any Continued from the previous page Subpoena Duces Tecum, 738 F.2d 1367, 1370 (D.C. Cir. 1984) and In re Sealed Case, 676 F.2d 793 (D.C. Cir. 1982). In each of those cases, the client sought to assert the privilege selectively, waiving it "in circumstances where disclosure might be beneficial while maintaining it in other circumstances where nondisclosure would be beneficial." In re Subpoena Duces Tecum, 738 F.2d at 1371. purpose except to prove their own gross impropriety. GFI is unhelpful becausee Moore did not acquiesce in Higgins's testifying in prior litigation. Instead, on Moore's motion, Higgins's testimony was completely disallowed and the law firms intending to elicit that testimony were disqualified.
II. IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE THAT HIGGINS ATTENDED HIS DEPOSITION
UNDER SUBPOENA
Defendants argue that while Higgins's duty of loyalty to Moore was dispositive of the prior case, in this case his duty to testify trumps the duty of loyalty because here, Higgins was subpoenaed to appear for deposition whereas in the prior case, he offered his testimony voluntarily. (“TPL’s fiduciary duty argument is a red herring – in this case, Mr. Higgins was compelled to testify pursuant to a subpoena.” Opp. at 5.) But this distinction is indefensible. The routine issuance of a subpoena does not decide the ethical issues that surround an attorney's testifying about matters that concern a client. In fact, those issues are commonly litigated after a subpoena has issued. Defendants completely ignore In re Au Clair, 961 F.2d 65, 67 (5th Cir. 1992), which plaintiffs briefed in their motion. In that case, the Fifth Circuit reversed a district
court order compelling the testimony of a defense attorney who was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. As the court explained, "the controlling law in this area is 'little more than a reinforcement of the Code of Professional Responsibility, Ethical Considerations, and Disciplinary Rules, promulgated by the American Bar Association and adopted by the [local jurisdictions]." Id., 961 F.2d at 69, quoting Wilson P. Abraham Constr. Corp. v. Armco Steel Corp., 559 F.2d 250, 253 (5th Cir. 1977). As Au Clair makes clear, those ethical rules are not
abrogated as defendants suggest by the issuance of a subpoena. Defendants are simply attempting to “piggyback” on Mr. Higgins’ prior breach of fiduciary duty in order to introduce this same improper evidence. (See Thirteenth Affirmative Defense: Inequitable Conduct in the proposed Answers of Matsushita Electrical Industrial Corp., Ltd., JVC Americas Corp. and Panasonic Corporation of North America filed September 13, 2007 (Dkt. No. 318-2.)
III. THE DISTRICT COURT'S AND THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT'S ANALYSIS OF
THE ISSUES PRESENTED IN THIS CASE REMAIN VALID
Defendants claim that Judge Fogel's and the Federal Circuit's careful analysis of the issues presented in this motion have been somehow vitiated by the fact that the public has had access to some of Higgins's improper statements in the year since those courts examined these issues. But as both the Fifth and Ninth Circuits have explained, "[t]he attorney-client privilege is evidentiary …" Doe v. A Corp., 709 F.2d 1043, 1046 (5th Cir. 1983); United States v. Rogers, 751 F.2d 1074, 1077 (9th Cir. 1985). It "prevent[s] the forced disclosure in a judicial proceeding of certain confidential communications between a client and a lawyer." Rogers, 751 F.2d at 1077 (emphasis added). Thus, the relevant question is not whether the client's information is known or has been improperly revealed so that claiming the privilege is now somehow futile. If that were the rule, then defendants would win just by doggedly repeating statements that should never have been uttered, and suggesting that the repetition has made plaintiffs' protestations futile. This is what defendants are trying to do here. Higgins's improper
statements are no more admissible as evidence in the Eastern District of Texas in 2007 than they were in the Northern District of California in 2005. By protesting Higgins's and former counsel's misconduct in 2004, and successfully litigating his ethics claims against them all the way to judgment and through appeal, Charles Moore has done all that he must to maintain the privilege. Neither the passage of time nor plaintiffs' failure to call the Discovery Hotline before defendants convened Higgins' deposition in 2007 has "laundered" Higgins improper statements. Defendants must make their inventorship case using evidence that is admissible.
IV. CONCLUSION
For all of the foregoing reasons, the Motion of TPL and Moore to strike Higgins's deposition testimony and related exhibits should be granted.
DATED: September 14, 2007
By: Roger L. Cook
TOWNSEND and TOWNSEND and CREW LLP
Roger L. Cook, CA State Bar No. 55208
Lead Counsel
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that counsel of record who are deemed to have consented to electronic service are being served this 14th day of September 2007, with a copy of this document via the Court’s CM/ECF system per Local Rule CV-5(a)(3). Any other counsel of record will be served by electronic mail, facsimile transmission and/or first class mail on this same date.
Vielleicht mal schauen : www.bakbone.com - ist der Laden aus dem Cliff Flöwers kommt. Interessant ist, das die "in Datensicherheit" machen...
Erinnert an Holocom... Übernahmeziel? Übertrieben? Zu weit hergeholt?
Gruß
Grüße Abenteurer
PS: Die meiste Kohle wird in den USA ja sowieso über den Verteidigungshaushalt abgedrückt über Holocom gab es da ja auch ein paar Bekannte..
For the last decade or so, we've heard about IP creation, IP protection, IP licensing, and IP companies. Is this really a new type of business or a familiar business wrapped up in new jargon?
By Jim Turley, Patriot Scientific -- Electronic Business, 9/19/2007
We're totally buzzword-enabled. Nobody sells products anymore. We "enable seamless methodology solutions targeted at attractive price points."
Who writes this stuff, and when did we decide that talking like lawyers or politicians was a good thing?
A case in point is "intellectual property," or IP. For the last decade or so, we've heard about IP creation, IP protection, IP licensing, and IP companies. Is this really a new type of business (oops, a "paradigm shift"), or is it a more familiar business wrapped up in new jargon?
The good news is, it's the latter, and the concept is easy to understand. Intellectual property has been around for a long time, and we're all familiar with it, even if we don't always call it by its currently fashionable moniker. In short, intellectual property is knowledge, and IP licensing just means sharing what you know. Books, music, teaching, art—they're all examples of IP. And the world would be much poorer without them.
For a somewhat seamier example, IP licensing is a lot like the world's oldest profession: You get to sell it and then turn around and sell it again to someone else. There's no inventory, no cost of goods, and no manufacturing. Unfortunately, the "product" depreciates rapidly and many of your customers prefer that you don't mention their names. Yes, indeed, it's a tried-and-true business model.
This same business model also works for software, music downloads, movies, and most professional services. In all cases, you're selling a valuable—but intangible—product. Plumbers and dentists certainly provide useful services, but they don't generally leave behind a material product, do they? You're paying for their time and expertise, not the PVC pipe or the little roll of dental floss. Movies don't leave a "residue," apart from good or bad memories. Same goes for music, especially now that we download tunes and no longer get the album covers or liner notes that once displayed our musical tastes to friends and visitors.
In the electronics world, IP encompasses both software and hardware. Software IP is easy to grok. We know we're paying for the bits on the CD-ROM, not the plastic CD itself. The same software is equally valuable, whether it comes on a CD, DVD, or floppy disk or as a download (the ultimate intangible IP).
Hardware IP is a bit trickier. After all, hardware is, by definition, a tangible product. But hardware schematics, Verilog, VHDL, test vectors, and other bits of engineering effort all fall under the rubric of intellectual property. You exert effort to create those things, and you can share them with other engineers. Whether or not you charge money for your schematics is another matter; you've created something valuable either way.
Hardware engineers are like a team of architects. Architectural firms create detailed blueprints for a building, but they don't actually swing the hammers. Instead, the architects sell their plans to construction firms that do the physical construction. The architects get paid for their plans, and the builders get paid for their labors. Everybody's happy.
Likewise, computer engineering firms can design chips (or boards, or systems, or networks, and so on) and then sell those designs to the folks who actually solder the devices together. This division of labor allows everyone to specialize. The designers design, and the builders build. The end customers don't know or care who, or how many people, took part in developing their shiny new iPhone. All they know is that they really like it.
The same goes for every other electronics product today. Cell phones, antilock brakes, satellite-TV receivers, or TiVo boxes weren't all developed by a single brilliant engineer. (And even if they were, that person didn't actually solder together each TiVo that has gone out the door.) We all build on the efforts of others; our "value add" is the expertise we bring and not in reinventing the proverbial wheel.
The value of your efforts—your intellectual property—depends on a lot of things, including the vagaries of market demand. Skill in designing RS-232 interfaces might be valuable for a while but worthless later on. If you've added a particularly brilliant bit of software to generic hardware, you'll find a ready and willing market. Competition and complexity are also factors.
Determining what your IP is worth is a tricky and inexact science—and the topic of next month's article.
Jim Turley is president and CEO of Patriot Scientific Corporation, an IP licensing company.
From I-
1. Drei tolle Vorstände, die bestimmt ihre bisherigen Jobs nicht aufgegeben haben um sich zu verschlechtern.
2. Durch einen Trick wurde ARM aus dem Prozeß ausgeschlossen ohne das PTSC sich die Ansprüche gegen ARM zu verbaut hat. Jetzt kann sich in Texas schneller geeinigt werden.
3. Viele Form 4 Meldungen bei der SEC deuten auf ein großes Vertrauen der Mitarbeiter.
4. Die Hauptversammlung steht in Kürze an und wird uns Klarheit bringen.
5. Die Mediation in Texas beginnt und hatte eine hohe Einigungsquote in der Vergangenheit.
6. Die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und der Newsflow wurde deutlich verbessert. Es vergeht kaum ein Tag ohne eine neue Meldung von PTSC.
7. Trotz USPTO und Texas wurden weitere Lizenzen abgeschlossen.
8. Turley hat seine bisherigen Versprechungen alle eingehalten.
Technology Properties Limited and Patriot Scientific Corporation,
Plaintiffs,
v.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.,
Panasonic Corporation of North America, JVC
Americas Corp., NEC Electronics America,
Inc., Toshiba Corporation, Toshiba America,
Inc., Toshiba America Electronic Components,
Inc., Toshiba America Information Systems,
Inc. and Toshiba America Consumer Products,
LLC,
Defendants.
JURY DEMANDED
ORDER GRANTING TOSHIBA AMERICA ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS, INC.’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO AMEND
The Court, having considered Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.’s
unopposed motion for leave to amend and finding good cause supporting it,
finds that the Motion should be GRANTED.
Signed By Judge Ward
Wenn es eine entsprechende News dafür gebe oder eine Vorentscheidung oder sonst was....könnte ich das schon verstehen...
was ich allerdings nicht verstehe ist, dass ohne irgendeine News oder wichtige Entscheidung oder sonst was der Kurs so bewegt wird.....
unverständlich
da muss ich schon ab 100k setzen um evtl. etwas zu bewegen ....
bei 400 mil. stück muss ich schon mind 1 mil am tag bewegen ...
da muss ich schon ab 100k setzen um evtl. etwas zu bewegen ....
bei 400 mil. stück muss ich schon mind 1 mil am tag bewegen ...
Nur die Ruhe bewahren, die Mediation läuft und die Warrents sind auch bald beendet.
Patriot Scientific Provides Details of Share Buyback
Thursday September 27, 4:05 pm ET
CARLSBAD, Calif., Sept. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Patriot Scientific (OTC Bulletin Board: PTSC - News) announced today that the company has recently purchased shares of its common stock on the open market. The purchases were part of a previously announced program in which the company has said that it plans to repurchase shares of the company's outstanding common stock from time to time.
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Patriot Scientific President and CEO Jim Turley said, "Patriot Scientific, which is a highly profitable company with no debt and approximately $22 million in cash on hand at the end of FY 2007, is by any reasonable measure that I know of substantially undervalued. The company's common stock is trading well below what we would regard as an appropriate multiple of earnings. We have taken advantage of this decline in the price of our stock to purchases shares at a price we deem to be strongly in the interests of our shareholders."
Turley said, "We continue to be extremely positive about Patriot Scientific and its future prospects. So far 23 companies have licensed our company's valuable patent portfolio. More than 300 other companies are on notice concerning their violation of our patents. As we have previously pointed out, the strength of the portfolio was underscored in the June Markman ruling by the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. The patents describe valuable techniques for improving chip speed, reducing power consumption and improving performance, all of which are interesting and useful to systems and semiconductor manufacturers worldwide."