My skepticism dates back to first reading some of the patents in 2004 and the press releases Avistar produced regarding Microsoft’s requests for re-examination of some of the patents (see public display of dis-affection: Avistar patents & Microsoft and AVSR vs. MSFT: numbers of patents or patent numbers?).

In hindsight, it seems that Avistar chose to change course about the time that it brought Bob Kirk in as CEO last July. After that time, Avistar said little publicly about the patents, seemingly not saying anything about U.S. PTO actions or licensing progress. January 19, two days before the Intellectual Ventures transaction, Avistar sold a license to Skype for $3M.  If 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 filing.

In the January 26 press release, Bob Kirk is quoted as saying “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.”

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 — it is hard to imagine easy negotiations with those companies. I find it easier to imagine that those companies are some of the investors in Intellectual Ventures and receptive to this latest news. [Update February 26: Verizon Patent Case Marks a First for Intellectual Ventures lists both Cisco and Microsoft as Intellectual Ventures "members".]

Red Arco Iris (en Inglés, Rainbow Network) is coming of age and has much to celebrate. From Keith and Karen Jaspers’ vision 15 years ago to today, much has been accomplished.

Outside of Ciudad Sandino, in Comarca: Trinidad Central, last week we celebrated the 25 millionth meal served at our feeding centers. The rate of malnutrition in the 124 communities we serve has gone down from about 50% upon our arrival to less than 25% today. [see also Aleyda Hernandez Tells Her Story]
Also outside of Ciudad Sandino, Housing Project Cuajachillo 2 celebrated the completion of the payoff of the (ten-year) mortgages for the houses Red Arco Iris built there. One of those celebrating was the baby girl in the center of the photo above. She is now the pre-adolescent with Keith and her baby photo, at right.
Health care miracles abound, e.g., Victoria walking again after a dozen years of immobility.
Students have progressed from our elementary schools, to sponsorship in high school, on to further education and/or to establishing businesses, such as that of the poultry entrepreneur in San Isidro, outside of Nagarote.

Of course, there is much more ahead in service, in internal adjustments as leaders step back and step up, and in partnership with those of like minds. I’m particularly intrigued by possibilities with el Porvenir and with el Samaritano.

Today was another Capitol 10K. Not a lot different from last year, about 15KM from parking to getting back in the car, a little under 3 hours total this year, about 103.5 minutes on the race clocks, so about 100 minutes, just over 16 minutes/mile, after subtracting for pit stops. (My mental model was to stay with the peloton which maybe I did.)

This year’s cell phone photos are below.

I’m leery of the clerical accuracy of the “Patent Application Information Retrieval” (“Public PAIR”) data at http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair, because of typos and worse that I have found in the past/find there now, but I have looked there at a few of the Avistar patents. There seem to be three patents of special interest when Avistar asserts patents against other companies. For example, from Avistar Announces Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against TANDBERG:

“Avistar Communications Corporation (Nasdaq:AVSR), a provider of business video collaboration solutions and technology, today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Collaboration Properties, Inc. (CPI), has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against TANDBERG ASA and TANDBERG, Inc. In the suit, CPI alleges that several TANDBERG videoconferencing products infringe three of CPI’s patents. The three patents involved are U.S. Patent No. 5,867,654; No. 5,896,500; and No. 6,212,547.”

According to PAIR:

• Patent number 5,867,654, “Two monitor videoconferencing hardware”, has a status of “Reexam Assigned to Examiner for Determination” as of April 11. (Update June 14: ’654 request for re-exam is now listed as denied, as of June 10.)
• Patent number 5,896,500, “System for call request which results in first and second call handle defining call state consisting of active or hold for its respective AV device” has a status of “Request for Reexamination Denied” as of May 30.
• Patent number 6,212,547, “UTP based video and data conferencing”, has a status of “Determination – Reexamination Ordered” as of May 20. (Update January 15, 2009: ’547 is now listed as “Non-Final Action Mailed”, as of December 5.)

So for these three main patents, the score seems to be Avistar 1 (#500) , Microsoft 1 (#547), with the tie breaker (#654) pending.

But I suspect that the number of patents requested for re-exam, and the numbers of patents where Avistar and Microsoft win these preliminary determinations, will matter very little relative to what happens with that one patent where reexam is ordered.

6,212,547 is likely more important than any of the other numbers above.

So the relatively public goings on between Avistar and Microsoft are more than curious. Comments on re-exam minutiae in Avistar’s February 25th press release, Microsoft Challenges Avistar Patents, seemed unnecessary within the usual rationale for such a release, investor relations. The March 26 release, Avistar Announces Cost Restructuring in Response to Patent Challenge by Microsoft was also successful in gaining trade press attention. This week’s Wainhouse Research Bulletin commented, “Avistar … published a rather odd press release (in our humble opinion) that the company was reducing its US and European workforce by 25% as a cost cutting measure prompted by Microsoft’s recent challenge to all 29 of Avistar’s US patents.” Also on Thursday, Redmond Channel Partner published Avistar’s Tale: Microsoft Shows Its Dark Side.

Is the venue the court of public opinion? If so, there may be Avistar detractors raising their voices. There are some in the videoconferencing a.k.a. “telepresence” industry rooting for Microsoft. They question the validity of U.S. patent 6,212,547, “UTP based video and data conferencing”, with an October 1, 1993 priority date, in light of a plethora of earlier systems including CU-SeeMe, the MBone, Intel’s prototypes, and the prior art cited by Microsoft’s re-exam request, the 1980′s Bell Labs “Rapport Multimedia Conferencing System”. They question the validity of 5,867,654, “Two monitor videoconferencing hardware”, in light of 1989 multiple monitor products from VTEL, and other historical practice, especially after last year’s KSR ruling.

An attorney representing Avistar visited me in 2004. He did not appreciate my opinion that the patents in question should not have been granted. I cringed later that year when Polycom paid Avistar $27.5M in a licensing agreement. A Polycom executive was apologetic when I questioned the amount. A Polycom competitor bemoaned Polycom’s unwillingness to stand up to Avistar. Last year RADVISION agreed to pay Avistar $4M, and Tandberg agreed to pay an undisclosed amount, probably about the same as the Polycom amount. So I do not see these re-exam requests as “Microsoft showing its dark side”.

Counting the walk from where I parked on W. 6th to the starting place at Riverside and Congress, and the walk back from the finish at Auditorium Shores to my car, it was probably 15 kilometers. From leaving my car to getting back in was just over three hours. I had hoped to maintain about a 15 minutes/mile pace. From start to finish, my elapsed time was 110 minutes, i.e., more like 18 minute miles. But if you subtract two rest room stops and purchasing an Earl Grey at Starbuck’s, I think my pace was about 16 minutes/mile.

There were lots of memorable moments. “It was fun. It was very fun.” There was music all long the route, guitar trios, bigger bands, steel drum bands, and a brass band at the half-way point playing the theme from “Rocky”.

It was raining for most of the first part, probably the whole race for the serious competitors. But we need the rain.

Here are my cell phone photos:

Thanks in good part to the appreciation of the Dell shares my father bought in 1989, my father has contributed significant funds to Rainbow Network in the last 8 years. This was my first trip to Nicaragua. One of the most important things I learned first hand was how efficiently Rainbow uses donors’ funds.

On an annual budget of about $2.25M, with a Nicaraguan staff of about 65, including 9 doctors, 2 dentists, 13 educators and 7 micro-loan coordinators, plus about 4000 Nicaraguan volunteers, Rainbow currently reaches about 50,000 people, in about 124 communities, organized as 7 networks (project regions). Driving around in 4 wheel drive pickups, on mostly unpaved rutted roads, with Keith, Mel, national director Nelson Palacios and other staff, I visited 3 of the 7 networks. Visiting about 15 of the 124 communities, I observed one dental visit, met the other dentist, saw the patients being treated by two of the doctors, observed several elementary school classes, participated in two micro-finance loan meetings, heard the public health presentations, attended an afterschool meeting of high school Rainbow scholarship students, and visited quite a few Rainbow feeding centers, which provide lunches for the school children, elderly, and pregnant/nursing mothers, five to six days a week.

Inescapable impressions for me are the comparisons to a successful startup. Keith’s non-NGO professional experience is as a sales executive and manager of a group of hotels. After 10+ years of experience with Habitat’s international board, Keith and Karen Jaspers self-funded Rainbow. After the first few years of successes, they converted Rainbow to a 501C and started accepting donations.

One of my most emotional moments was seeing the results of my father’s funding in 2002 of a housing project completed in 2003. People who had lived in dirt floor shacks, got decent housing with 20 year loans that they can afford to pay off through the micro-finance program. Rainbow has now built more than 500 of these homes.

Today, the project my father funded is filled with happy families, that have maintained, decorated and improved those simple buildings. Though they no longer sleep on dirt floors (I can’t imagine sleeping in the mud in the six month rainy season), they are still crowded in these homes, with up to four families sharing one dwelling. While visiting Colonia La Paz, I committed funds for four new homes on adjacent land owned by Rainbow.

I brought back a few GB of video clips and photos and integrated those into a more comprehensive trip report at http://technologists.com/RN/FirstVisit/.

It was about June 8, 1966. James Meredith had started his solitary March Against Fear on June 5^th, and had been shot and wounded by a sniper on June 6^th.

I had been part of “The Movement” for some time. I had worked over holidays to help with voter registration, even been apprehended and castigated by police for trying to help people vote, but released without arrest.

When Rev. King and others continued the March Against Fear after the shooting, a few friends and I decided to join the March.

One night, there he (Rev. King) was, in the flesh, sitting on the back of a large truck. About ten of us gathered around to listen to him, as I recall.

My parents had tried to talk me out of going. They supported Rev. King, but feared for my safety. When I returned from Mississippi, I came down with a terrible flu-like illness and lost my summer job. They didn’t like that, either. But I feel so privileged that I was able to be with Rev. King that night. 

P.S. I like the quote in Henry Abbott’s TrueHoop post.

This greatly amused me and my high school friends in the “briefcase gang”. They started calling me “Wohhg”, pronounced “Wog”. One gave me the moniker “Carlywog”.

Years later, the credits in Jack Moore‘s Sandscript listed “sound tech by Dr. Karl Z. Wog”.