Anderson

Surely one of the more colorful terms in the world of start-ups is the word "unicorn." As most readers are probably aware, in addition to being the name of the mythical animal with a single long horn protruding from its forehead, unicorn has come to mean within the venture capital industry a privately-held start-up company whose valuation exceeds one billion dollars. These valuations are not based on the amount of actual sales, which are a bare fraction of that amount, if at all, but rather some combination of hard data and different degrees of wishful thinking about the future prospects of the company. Fortune magazine estimated as of early 2015 that were over 80 unicorns, and Institutional Investor magazine recently claimed that there are now over 120 such companies, the dearest of which is Uber , valued at between $50- $60 billion dollars. How IP affects the valuations of unicorns is uncertain. While the role of IP as part of such valuations will vary from comp...

In California, there are basically at least two ways to create a law.   The first is the traditional route through the legislature with the Governor’s signature.   The second is through the initiative process .   Essentially, an initiative proposal with a certain number of voter signatures can be added to a ballot that the electorate will vote on—think direct democracy.   This process allows a bypass around the legislature and the Governor, and allows voters to, for the most part, enact laws.   According to the Sacramento Bee , the California Drug Price Relief Act has garnered enough signatures to be placed on the November ballot.   The Act will require that the State (so eventually retirees, prisoners, low income folks etc) receive the same price for pharmaceuticals that will be paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.   The article reports that proponents of the Act state that this will lead to significantly lower prices for pharmaceu...

Apple and Ericsson have been engaged in a number of patent infringement suits over the past few years. Finally, on Monday Ericsson announced that it had reached a settlement with Apple under which Apple would be granted to all of Ericsson's standard-essential patents , as well as to certain other patent rights (which are not named). We've often reported on these patents on this blog and my fellow contributor Keith Mallinson has studied them extensively and their effect on competition. The Apple settlement will apparently boost Ericsson's revenue from licensing of intellectual property rights in 2015 to SEK 13-14 b (around USD 1.5 billion) compared to 2014's revenue of SEK 9.9 bn reported here . It's not surprising that Ericsson's share price jumped yesterday from Friday's closing price of USD 9.12 to USD 9.62 at 09.50 Eastern time after announcement and closed today (Tuesday) at USD 9.56. Apple's price did not change much during the same period. It...