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PYST has the potential of becoming the next PTSC. Nice uptrend forming, lots of buying at thhe ask and has been accumulating over the past week and a half. Breakout to the upside any day now.
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I think rob was waiting to buy at lower prices and then we shot up today. I think we might see news tomorrow, if we do, were poised to see $2 again. I wish I would have bought more at 1.40 today, oh well...
-------------------- Success is having the time and money to enjoy all of life's wonders... Posts: 2083 | Registered: Nov 2005
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They did load up. They went fishing during the day and grabbed some shares from the weakhanded... oh well... a few more weeks until financials hit.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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Good Article -------------------------------- Embedded in a variety of consumer products like these are computer processors that Patriot Scientific of Carlsbad says are based on proprietary technology By Bruce V. Bigelow UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 24, 2006
Something weird happened last summer at Patriot Scientific Corp. The company made money.
Since the technology developer was launched in San Diego in 1987, Patriot had always lost money. Its quarterly losses were as predictable as the daily commuter traffic tie-ups in Sorrento Valley.
As a corporate ne'er do well, Patriot financed its operations for some 18 years by issuing millions of shares of stock, which usually traded over the counter for pennies a share. The company has about 427 million shares outstanding, including warrants, options and convertible bonds, according to filings with government regulators.
But Patriot's outlook began to brighten last spring, and these days, the biggest question appears to be just how bright Patriot's future may really be.
“Right now, you're talking to a company that 60 days ago had stock trading in the 12 to 14 cents range,” said David Pohl, a lawyer and board member who became Patriot's chief executive in June. Yesterday, Patriot's stock closed at $1.60 a share, a 14 cent gain in bulletin board trading of more than 6.2 million shares.
So what happened?
After spending some 15 years trying vainly to commercialize various technologies, Patriot moved in early 2002 to generate revenue instead by licensing its proprietary technology to other companies.
Advertisement The company focused in particular on technology for a specialized computer chip dubbed “Sh-Boom,” which Patriot acquired in 1994. Patriot concluded that a group of patents covering the Sh-Boom microprocessor design represented a fundamental innovation that had been absorbed throughout the semiconductor industry. The industry just didn't realize it.
Patriot moved to correct that oversight, initially by filing a series of patent infringement lawsuits in early 2004 against some major Japanese computer makers. The company also sent letters to some 150 other companies, notifying them of potential infringements on Patriot's patents.
Patriot, which is now based in Carlsbad, revised its strategy last year by forming a joint venture with the TPL Group, a Cupertino firm that specializes in intellectual property licensing. Patriot withdrew the patent lawsuits it had filed against the Japanese computer giants, and TPL filed new cases on behalf of its joint venture with Patriot.
“I think of this as the business model of the new millennium,” said Mark A. Lemley, a professor of law at the Stanford Law School who specializes in intellectual property and patent law. A number of other firms, such as Forgent Networks, Acacia Research and Rambus are pursuing similar strategies, Lemley said.
“Ten years ago, there was one guy who was making a living doing this – Jerome Lemelson,” Lemley said. “Now there are certainly dozens that are actively trying to make a living at it and probably hundreds more in the wings.”
The motivation is clear.
This month, the maker of BlackBerry wireless e-mail devices agreed to pay $612.5 million to NTP, a private patent holding firm in McLean, Va., to resolve a long-running patent dispute. The case threatened to shut down BlackBerry service nationwide.
A similar high-profile case is scheduled for arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court next week between auction giant eBay and MercExchange, a networking-systems developer. A federal jury found in 2003 that eBay had infringed on MercExchange patents related to its “Buy It Now” feature, which lets shoppers buy items at a fixed price, without participating in an auction.
A rising tide of such cases also has prompted Congress to consider patent reform legislation.
“Hundreds of patent infringement cases are pending against computer software and hardware manufacturers,” Emery Simon, a lawyer for the Business Software Alliance trade group, said in testimony last year before the House Judiciary Committee. He argued that the problem has become endemic in the technology industry.
Stanford's Lemley said the patent reform bill proposed by Congress raises broad concerns for inventors, however, by restricting the legal power they now have to shut down patent infringers and by limiting their monetary damages.
“The problem is, how do you distinguish between the people who are abusing the system and the people who are making legitimate use of the system?” Lemley said.
At Patriot Scientific, Pohl maintains the BlackBerry case bears no resemblance to the business strategy his company has been pursuing in recent years.
Patriot's goal is not to litigate, Pohl said, but to negotiate with other technology companies for the licensing rights to a group of related patents held jointly by Patriot and TPL.
Patriot settled on this course after nearly getting derailed in the patent litigation it initiated in 2004.
Patriot had acquired its patent rights to the Sh-Boom chip that were tied to Russell H. Fish, a Silicon Valley engineer. But Fish was only one of two inventors who developed the Sh-Boom chip. TPL held the rights from the other co-inventor, Charles Moore.
Patriot initially claimed to be the sole owner of the significant patent claims. But the company was no match for TPL, Fish said in a recent interview.
“TPL just out-maneuvered, out-bluffed and out-poker-played them,” Fish said. “It was really amateur hour, but that's the way it tends to be with these penny stocks.”
During the dispute, Pohl and other members of Patriot's board stepped in to fire the New York law firm that was handling the patent litigation. They also replaced Patriot's chief executive and chief financial officer.
“At some point, the executive committee decided their views were at odds with management as to the desirability of combining the interests of Patriot and TPL,” Pohl said. “Ultimately, the negotiations resulted in a joint venture being put together. Then it was decided that a change in management would be prudent for the company.”
Under terms of the joint venture, Patriot also wisely decided to let the TPL Group oversee the chore of patent licensing and litigation.
In regulatory filings last year with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Patriot disclosed that it had reached two licensing agreements with major chip makers. Intel agreed to make a one-time, lump-sum payment of $10 million to license the technology. AMD reached a similar deal for roughly $3 million.
Patriot later disclosed that Hewlett-Packard had reached a similar lump-sum deal for $10 million.
In recent months, Patriot announced it also has reached licensing agreements with Fujitsu and Casio, although the value of those deals have not been disclosed.
None of these deals requires royalties or other types of recurring payments, but Pohl sees no shortage of revenue.
“There is such a mother lode out there to be mined that this doesn't concern us at the present time,” Pohl said.
The patents are valid through 2015, he added, and the joint venture has identified hundreds, if not thousands, of products that potentially infringe. Aside from desktop computers, notebooks and servers, Pohl said the list includes digital TVs, portable media players, DVD recorders and players, cell phones, microwave ovens, dishwashers, medical equipment and even automotive electronics.
The potential licensing revenue could be substantial, although Stanford's Lemley said the value of the deals disclosed by Patriot so far appear relatively minimal. He suggested the deals are being struck close to the “nuisance value” of the litigation itself.
“The thing about patent litigation is that it is extremely expensive – typically $5 million per side in legal fees,” Lemley said.
In any case, the revenue generated so far has enabled Patriot to show a profit in its fiscal 2006 first quarter – for the first time in 18 years. The company reported net income of more than $4.4 million, or a penny a share, for the three months ended Aug. 31. The company also listed more than $11.8 million in assets on its balance sheet.
As a result, the company paid a cash dividend this week of 2 cents a share to qualified shareholders. In its announcement last month, Patriot said the move was “virtually unprecedented among Microcap stocks” – referring to companies with a total market valuation of less than $250 million.
“We have $17 million in cash and five employees,” Pohl said. “So why not do something that has hardly ever been done before by a microcap. Let's distribute some of this cash to our shareholders.”
The dividend also amounted to a broad signal to the market that Patriot has crossed the line into profitability.
Earlier this month, the company announced plans to do it again. The company declared it will pay a cash dividend – this time 4 cents a share – to qualified shareholders of record as of March 31.
Such moves have spurred investors to push up the price of Patriot's stock. With the price now at $1.60 a share, Patriot isn't a penny stock any more – and with the company's market valuation close to $500 million, Patriot is no longer a microcap.
-------------------- "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." - Henry Ford Posts: 798 | Registered: Jun 2004
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There are a lot of great reports surfacing about PTSC. I hope they can live up to everyones expectations. They need to do two things from my point of view to bring this stock to its full potential. 1. Use these patent infringement suits and license agreements to gain AS MUCH CAPITAL AS POSSIBLE. 2. Utilize the new money for growth and expanding opportunities for revenue.
If they can accomplish these two things we will all be very happy campers EOY. No pr's or 8K this week like I thought, next week should be prime for one or both, not to mention the cash dividend payout on the 31st. The 10Q quarterly earnings report is due out the 2nd or 3rd week in Apr, so these next couple weeks should be very exciting and profitable indeed! See everyone next week.
-------------------- Success is having the time and money to enjoy all of life's wonders... Posts: 2083 | Registered: Nov 2005
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PTSC is playing this very nicely. PR about the dividend and the court case. Nothing new since. One week left until end of 1stQ. This week we get a PR restating the Dividend with the Ex-date of 3/29/2006, date of record is 3/31/2006. We will see some buying monday and tuesday.
Remember the Divy won't be paid until the end of April. I wonder why? Because the money from the Casio and Fujitsu deals won't come in until after April first to go on next quarter's business.
April is going to be a huge month.
We have 8k's for Casio & Fujitsu. Hopefully done seperately. Will have financials show profits. Dividend and possibly more licensing agreements.
This is no April Fool's joke it's for real buckle up.
Posts: 3255 | From: Los Angeles California | Registered: Jan 2006
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Maybe the MM's are done shaking the tree for awhile...
-------------------- "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." - Henry Ford Posts: 798 | Registered: Jun 2004
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It's amazing what a base we have at 1.55 here.. I'm looking to buy large again next week.. but was hoping for 1.40, even 1.30. Guess I'm not going to get it. EVERYONE is anticipating good news and is unwilling to sell.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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-------------------- "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." - Henry Ford Posts: 798 | Registered: Jun 2004
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What do you have to do to get the dividend? I bought today, do I have to hold till the 31st to get the dividend? I think I will hold this stock at least until the next 8K's come out. Should be pretty easy money I hope.
Posts: 89 | Registered: Mar 2006
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