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Google and Yahoo Settle Overture Lawsuit
An anonymous reader writes "Google and Yahoo have apparently settled their ongoing lawsuit involving patented on-line ad technology owned by Yahoo subsidiary Overture. (U.S. Patent 6,269,361). According to reports, Google will issue 2.7 million common shares to Yahoo in return for a license. Read more about the infringement suit here. This move is expected to lower any potential downsides to Google's upcoming IPO."
It's very common. For example, in almost any story involving the purchase of a company for $XXX million (particularly ones from the ex-dot-com days) the deal is actually for stock, not cash. It's also common for companies to swap options or warrants as part of some deal.
Shares have value, even if a company isn't public. It's simply a little easier to place a value on a public company, since you have so many opinions floating around in the market.
And I presume you know everything about anything in your field as well? People do make minor mistakes sometimes.
That said, I stand corrected. I guess my knowledge for Jeopardy has been improved. That story is likely not atypical for that era, with all the railroad trusts, etc- money talks. Also, today you have 1 year in the US to file a patent application from the first sale or public disclosure anywhere in the world. Meucci would be out of luck today, as it was a decade before he filed anything.
Not being an expert in 19th century patent law, I can make a few comments about if this happened today.
1- The US is a "first to invent" country, which awards patents to the person able to prove they invented it first. The rest of the world is "first to file."
2- The US now has the Disclosure Document Program, which will serve as evidence of the date of conception of an invention. You still need to file, and cannot sit on an invention for years. The filing fee is $10.
3- Provisional patent application, which has less statutory disclosure requirements, has a $85 filing fee. Often used for filing a journal article before publication.