{"id":396,"date":"2010-02-02T16:30:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T21:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/technologists.com\/notes\/?p=396"},"modified":"2022-07-02T16:03:37","modified_gmt":"2022-07-02T21:03:37","slug":"avistar-props","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/2010\/02\/02\/avistar-props\/","title":{"rendered":"Avistar props"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script type='application\/json' class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links'>[{\"id\":472,\"href\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.avistar.com\\\/company\\\/news_detail.aspx?id=181\",\"archived_href\":\"http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20110904192101\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.avistar.com\\\/company\\\/news_detail.aspx?id=181\",\"redirect_href\":\"\",\"checks\":[{\"date\":\"2025-11-01 07:38:32\",\"http_code\":503},{\"date\":\"2025-11-08 20:12:48\",\"http_code\":503},{\"date\":\"2025-11-16 06:24:45\",\"http_code\":503},{\"date\":\"2025-12-03 14:46:02\",\"http_code\":503},{\"date\":\"2025-12-07 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05:23:16\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-01-01 12:11:11\",\"http_code\":503},{\"date\":\"2026-01-09 06:39:27\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-01-17 05:50:34\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-01-21 17:23:50\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-02-08 21:25:47\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-02-11 22:26:31\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-02-16 03:38:20\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-03-22 10:22:49\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-03-26 22:44:02\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-04-01 10:05:10\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-04-06 03:52:39\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-04-26 03:51:54\",\"http_code\":200},{\"date\":\"2026-05-04 21:32:47\",\"http_code\":200}],\"broken\":false,\"last_checked\":{\"date\":\"2026-05-04 21:32:47\",\"http_code\":200},\"process\":\"done\"},{\"id\":475,\"href\":\"http:\\\/\\\/investor.shareholder.com\\\/avistar\\\/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1111632-10-4\",\"archived_href\":\"\",\"redirect_href\":\"\",\"checks\":[],\"broken\":false,\"last_checked\":null,\"process\":\"done\"},{\"id\":476,\"href\":\"http:\\\/\\\/investor.shareholder.com\\\/avistar\\\/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1111632-10-3\",\"archived_href\":\"\",\"redirect_href\":\"\",\"checks\":[],\"broken\":false,\"last_checked\":null,\"process\":\"done\"}]<\/script>After years of skepticism about Avistar&#8217;s patent licensing and litigation pursuits, I feel obligated to express admiration for Avistar&#8217;s transitioning away from those pursuits, as announced last week: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avistar.com\/company\/news_detail.aspx?id=181\">Avistar Communications Monetizes Its Patent Portfolio and Closes Transaction with Intellectual Ventures Management, LLC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My skepticism dates back to first reading some of the patents in 2004 and the press releases Avistar produced regarding Microsoft&#8217;s requests for re-examination of some of the patents (see\u00a0<a title=\"Permanent Link: public display of dis-affection: Avistar patents &amp; Microsoft\" rel=\"bookmark\" href=\"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/2008\/04\/05\/public-display-of-dis-affection-avistar-patents-microsoft\/\">public display of dis-affection: Avistar patents &amp; Microsoft<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/technologists.com\/notes\/2008\/06\/03\/avsr-vs-msft-numbers-of-patents-or-patent-numbers\/\">AVSR vs. MSFT: numbers of patents or patent numbers?<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>In hindsight, it seems that Avistar chose to change course about the time that it <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20091027093403\/http:\/\/www.avistar.com:80\/company\/news_detail.aspx?id=167\">brought Bob Kirk in as CEO last July<\/a>. After that time, Avistar said little publicly about the patents, seemingly <a href=\"https:\/\/technologists.com\/notes\/2009\/08\/10\/avsr-vs-msft-unpublicized-activity\/\">not saying anything<\/a> about U.S. PTO actions or licensing progress. January 19, two days before the Intellectual Ventures <a href=\"http:\/\/investor.shareholder.com\/avistar\/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1111632-10-4\">transaction<\/a>, Avistar sold a license to Skype for $3M. \u00a0If this had happened a couple of years ago, there would likely have been significant publicity. The only Avistar publicity about the Skype transaction appears to be the SEC 8-K <a href=\"http:\/\/investor.shareholder.com\/avistar\/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1111632-10-3\">filing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the January 26 press release, Bob Kirk is quoted as saying &#8220;This also removes what has been a significant distraction for the team and our operation in general, while providing us the capital to more aggressively invest in our business.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It is difficult to say more without speculation. Avistar had announced licenses with many potential licensees, but, as far as I can tell, had not succeeded in negotiating licenses with Cisco, Hewlett-Packard or Microsoft \u2014 it is hard to imagine easy negotiations with those companies. I find it easier to imagine that those companies are some of the <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20091229093454\/http:\/\/www.intellectualventures.com:80\/docs\/IVfactSheetGeneralOct09final.pdf\">investors<\/a> in Intellectual Ventures and receptive to this latest news. [<strong>Update February 26:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180628165308\/http:\/\/www.law.com\/jsp\/article.jsp?id=1202444656758\">Verizon Patent Case Marks a First for Intellectual Ventures<\/a> lists both Cisco and Microsoft as Intellectual Ventures &#8220;members&#8221;.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After years of skepticism about Avistar&#8217;s patent licensing and litigation pursuits, I feel obligated to express admiration for Avistar&#8217;s transitioning away from those pursuits, as announced last week: Avistar Communications Monetizes Its Patent Portfolio and Closes Transaction with Intellectual Ventures Management, LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8c9uP-6o","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2175,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/2175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}