Additional Extra Credit Opportunity - Idea Pitch Final

The BPC Idea Pitch Final is tomorrow, Nov. 20th @ 2:00pm in 151 TNRB. Prof. Richards is offering 20 points extra credit for those who attend and submit a 1-page paper on "Which Idea I Thought Should Have Won and Why Compared to the Other Competitors."

From the BPC staff: "Students are invited to come watch the Top 3 finalists of the Idea Pitch Competition compete for $3,500 on Friday Nov. 20th at 2:00pm in 151 TNRB. Not only will the students in the audience be able to learn from the students presenting their business ideas, but they'll also have an opportunity to win a drawing for ski passes and restaurant gift certificates! Please come and support the Final Event of the Idea Pitch Competition, presented by BYU's Business Plan Competition."

Prof. Richards said, "Students, I have been involved in the filtering of the best ideas in this competition. I am so impress by the ideas this year, that I am making it extra credit to attend this finale. In fact, there is a team from my classes in the Final Four!!!"

Recap:
- 20 pts extra credit for attending and writing 1-page paper
- Tomorrow (Friday), Nov. 20 @ 2pm in 151 TNRB
- Email your papers to mfg479@gmail.com with subject "Idea Pitch Extra Credit"

Presentation Schedule Posted

The presentation schedule has been posted in Blackboard under Course Documents. Please check to see when your group is presenting and email any concerns to mfg479@gmail.com.

Presentation Day Signups

MFG479 Students,

Thank you for the quick responses clarifying your teams. Now that we know how exactly how many teams there are we can start the signups for presentation times.

As Prof. Richards previously announced, there will be no presentations Nov. 18th, however, the rest of the presentation days will go on as planned:

Day 1--Nov. 23
Day 2--Nov. 30
Day 3--Dec. 2
Day 4--Dec. 7
Day 5--Dec. 9

Each presentation day will have three teams presenting at the following times: 2:00pm, 2:25pm, and 2:50pm.


In order to be fair, signups will be done draft style, with each team receiving a random spot in the draft selection. For example:

If Team A receives the #2 pick, while Team B receives the #1 pick, then Team B will choose what day and time they would like to present first, followed by Team A.

Pick #1 -- Team B's preference will be filled first
Pick #2 -- Team A's preference will be filled second


Each team needs to send in their Top 3 day and time slot preferences and I will use these preferences when in it is that team's turn in the order. An example list of preferences would be:

Preference 1: Day 1--Nov. 23, 2:00pm
Preference 2: Day 2--Nov. 30, 2:25pm
Preference 3: Day 5--Dec. 9, 2:00pm


Of course, there will be teams that have had their choices previously selected by teams higher in the draft. In this case they will be put into a day and time that was closest to their 1st choice. However, if your choices were all on Day 1, and you are 15th in the order, do not be surprised if you are nowhere near Day 1.


Hopefully this made sense. To recap, each team (as in one per team) needs to send an email to mfg479@gmail.com including:

- "PresentationSignups" as the subject of the email
- Your team/business name & list of team members (some did not include team name previously)
- Your Top 3 preferences for presentation times



Please have this email sent by 5:00pm on Friday, Nov. 13, 2009. If your team's email is not received by that time, then your team will be assigned to whatever time slot is left.

Questions? Email me at mfg479@gmail.com. Thanks!

- John Jr, TA

URGENT -- Team Composition Clarification

MFG479 Students,

It is time to start signing up for presentation times for your final business plan, however there are still some students who have not reported their team compositions. Dr. Strong and Prof. Richards need to know exactly how many teams there are before they can assign slots and times. I know there have been a few switches and splits amongst teams since the team composition was due, so this is what each team needs to do:


- Send an updated copy of your team's composition to the mfg479@gmail.com address ASAP.
- Only one per team is needed.

Please send this email by Noon Tomorrow (Nov. 10th) so that we can have every team scheduled for a time by this week. If you are past this deadline and are just reading this email, please respond immediately.

Thanks.

Idea Pitch Submission Deadline

Student Entrepreneurs,

The first stage of the Business Plan Competition (BPC) is just around the corner. We are excited about the amount of interest we have seen in the Idea Pitch Competition thus far! As a reminder, if you wish to compete in the Idea Pitch Competition, 4 hard copies of your idea pitch summary must be submitted to the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (470 TNRB) no later than 2:00 PM on Thursday, November 5, 2009. A document containing the complete guidelines for the idea pitch submission is attached to this email.

Remember, there is no limit to the number of ideas you may submit, so bring them all! The Idea Pitch Competition is a crucial first step for those interested in getting good feedback to further develop those ideas for entry in the Business Plan Competition next spring. The top 30 ideas as determined by the BPC judges will receive further mentoring mid-November, after which semi-finalists will be announced and compete to become one of three finalists. Idea Pitch awards this year have been generously provided by the CET and amount to $2,000 for first place, $1,000 for second place, and $500 for third place.

If you have additional questions about the Idea Pitch Competition, review the attached guidelines, visit bpc.byu.edu, or stop by the CET (470 TNRB). Submit your idea, and maybe your idea will Be The Next Big Thing!

Good luck!

BPC Committee

MFG 479 Students,

For those that are planning on entering the Business Plan Competition, they are holding a workshop to help generate ideas for a business or refine your current idea.

Thursday @ 7pm
W310 TNRB

See bpc.byu.edu for more info.

Fundraising Panel Monday Oct. 26

MFG479 Students,

We have a tremendous fundraising panel for next Monday's class! Here is who is coming - look them up on Google and be ready with your questions:

Entrepreneur currently seeking financing for the first time - Alan Martin, CampusBookRentals.com (confirmed)

• Entrepreneur who has successfully raised money - Ryan Caldwell, EnticeLabs (confirmed)
  
Angel Investor - Kyle Love, UtahAngels (confirmed)
Venture Debt Investor - Damon Kirschmeier, Innoventures (confirmed)
Venture Capitalist - Greg Warnock, venture capital/private equity (confirmed)

The format will be that each panelist will have 3-5 minutes to share a little bit about their role in the venture ecosystem. After each panelist gives a quick rundown, then we will open it up for Q&A.

- Prof Richards

Exam 1 Stats

MFG479 Students,

Prof. Richards asked me to announce the stats for the first exam.

Exam 1

MIN	40
MAX	96
MEAN	74.5

- John Jr, TA

BYU Business Plan Competition Kickoff Tomorrow!

MFG479 Students,

The BYU Business Plan Competition Kickoff Event is tomorrow!

The business plan you are preparing in your class is EXACTLY what the BPC is looking for. There is no cost to enter besides your time. The resources the competition offers can also help improve your class business plan while preparing it for the competition. Check out http://bpc.byu.edu for more information on eligibility, registration and a schedule of events.


Come learn how to turn your idea into a successful business. Enjoy free pizza and your chance to win an iPod Touch or Nintendo Wii. Come back the next day for our first idea workshop to find out how to get your idea going.

Kick Off Event
Wednesday, Oct 21^st
6:30 PM (doors open at 6PM)
3220 WSC

On Thursday there will also be a workshop for those that still need an idea for their team or want to refine their idea. Those that attend the workshops and use all the offered resources do a lot better in the competition than others.

Idea Workshop - Find A Winning Business Idea
Thursday, Oct 22^nd
11:00 AM
3223 WSC

Engineering Startup Event -- Today!

Free event today! See attached image for more information.

Free Intellectual Property Seminar

As part of the Utah Student 25 (www.UtahStudent25.com) event, a leading intellectual property law firm, Bateman IP Law Group, is holding a FREE seminar on intellectual property protection for start up and emerging entrepreneurial ventures. This is a unique opportunity only being made available due to Bateman's tremendous support of the Utah Student 25 event.

Please attend. The attached flyer has the details. It is on two nights, one in Orem and the other in SLC. Free Dinner, too! But, it's limited to the first 25 who RSVP by calling 801-533-0320.

- Prof John Richards

Grades Updated

MFG 479 Students,

Grades have been posted, including the assignments turned in on Wednesday. If you notice an error or have a question about your grades please send an email to mfg479@gmail.com.

- John Jr, MFG479 TA

To: Creating New Ventures students

Sharing how my reading of the daily newspaper leads to ideas ...

This industry is begging for a Napster, YouTube, something that will provide a legal but cool way of handling e-books. There are probably many ancillary ideas that could come from this dilemma. Who will do it? Why not you?

Read this article ...

- Prof. Richards

October 4, 2009

Digital Domain

Will Books Be Napsterized?

By RANDALL STROSS

YOU can buy “The Lost Symbol,” by Dan Brown, as an e-book for $9.99 at Amazon.com.

Or you can don a pirate’s cap and snatch a free copy from another online user at RapidShare, Megaupload, Hotfile and other file-storage sites.

Until now, few readers have preferred e-books to printed or audible versions, so the public availability of free-for-the-taking copies did not much matter. But e-books won’t stay on the periphery of book publishing much longer. E-book hardware is on the verge of going mainstream. More dedicated e-readers are coming, with ever larger screens. So, too, are computer tablets that can serve as giant e-readers, and hardware that will not be very hard at all: a thin display flexible enough to roll up into a tube.

With the new devices in hand, will book buyers avert their eyes from the free copies only a few clicks away that have been uploaded without the copyright holder’s permission? Mindful of what happened to the music industry at a similar transitional juncture, book publishers are about to discover whether their industry is different enough to be spared a similarly dismal fate.

The book industry has not received cheery news for a while. Publishers and authors alike have relied upon sales of general-interest hardcover books as the foundation of the business. The Association of American Publishers estimated that these hardcover sales in the United States declined 13 percent in 2008, versus the previous year. This year, these sales were down 15.5 percent through July, versus the same period of 2008. Total e-book sales, though up considerably this year, remained small, at $81.5 million, or 1.6 percent of total book sales through July.

“We are seeing lots of online piracy activities across all kinds of books — pretty much every category is turning up,” said Ed McCoyd, an executive director at the association. “What happens when 20 to 30 percent of book readers use digital as the primary mode of reading books? Piracy’s a big concern.”

Adam Rothberg, vice president for corporate communications at Simon & Schuster, said: “Everybody in the industry considers piracy a significant issue, but it’s been difficult to quantify the magnitude of the problem. We know people post things but we don’t know how many people take them.”

We do know that people have been helping themselves to digital music without paying. When the music industry was “Napsterized” by free file-sharing, it suffered a blow from which it hasn’t recovered. Since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of the industry’s inflation-adjusted sales in the United States, even including sales from Apple’s highly successful iTunes Music Store, has dropped by more than half, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

A report earlier this year by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, based on multiple studies in 16 countries covering three years, estimated that 95 percent of music downloads “are unauthorized, with no payment to artists and producers.”

Free file-sharing of e-books will most likely come to be associated with RapidShare, a file-hosting company based in Switzerland. It says its customers have uploaded onto its servers more than 10 petabytes of files — that’s more than 10 million gigabytes — and can handle up to three million users simultaneously. Anyone can upload, and anyone can download; for light users, the service is free. RapidShare does not list the files — a user must know the impossible-to-guess U.R.L. in order to download one.

But anyone who wants to make a file widely available simply publishes the U.R.L. and a description somewhere online, like a blog or a discussion forum, and Google and other search engines notice. No passwords protect the files.

“As far as we can tell, RapidShare is the largest host site of pirated material,” Mr. McCoyd said. “Some publishers are saying half of all infringements are linked to it.”

When I asked Katharina Scheid, a spokeswoman for RapidShare, if the company had a general sense of what kinds of material were most often placed on its servers — music? videos? other kinds of content? — she said she could not say because “for us, everything is just a file, no matter what.”

At my request, Attributor, a company based in Redwood City, Calif., that offers publishers antipiracy services, did a search last week to see how many e-book copies of “The Lost Symbol” were available free on the Web. After verifying that each file claiming to be the book actually was, Attributor reported that 166 copies of the e-book were available on 11 sites. RapidShare accounted for 102.

Ms. Scheid said her company complied with publishers’ take-down requests. But the request must refer to a particular file and use the specific U.R.L.; it’s left to the publishers to find all instances of a given book title on RapidShare’s servers. (I can report that RapidShare acted promptly in September when my publisher, Simon & Schuster, asked it to remove an audiobook version of one of my own books and provided the U.R.L. for the one file.) According to Ms. Scheid, the company gets requests to remove about 1 to 2 percent of the files that are uploaded daily.

To protect users’ privacy, however, she said RapidShare does not attempt to block the uploading of infringing material in the first place: “We don’t do content filtering; we don’t look into uploaded files.” Once a file is removed, the company tries to keep perfectly identical files from being uploaded again, but she listed various ways that determined users can alter the files just enough to effectively circumvent these measures. (My book reappeared on RapidShare a few days after it was taken down.) Hotfile and Megaupload did not respond to requests for comment.

RapidShare and fellow online storage services say that their services help users share large files easily or store personal data without having to carry around a memory stick. On the F.A.Q.’s page of its Web site, Megaupload depicts its customers as the most ordinary of citizens: “Students, professional business people, moms, dads, doctors, plumbers, insurance salesmen, mortgage brokers, you name it.”

Publishers and authors are about the only groups that go unmentioned. Ms. Scheid, of RapidShare, has advice for them if they are unhappy that her company’s users are distributing e-books without paying the copyright holders: Learn from the band Nine Inch Nails. It marketed itself “by giving away most of their content for free.”

I will forward the suggestion along, as soon as authors can pack arenas full and pirated e-books can serve as concert fliers.

First Social Venture Start-up Group

MFG479 Students,

Interested in launching a social venture?

Looking to join a team with an amazing idea to change the world?

No clue what a social venture is...but interested in making a difference and money at the same time?!

Then come join us for our First Social Venture Start-up Group meeting!!!

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 6th @ 7pm

Location: W110 Tanner Building

Agenda: Introduction to social entrepreneurship and social ventures, guest lectures by successful BYU social entrepreneurs, and networking to start forming social venture teams...!

Bonus: Food will be provided!

Social ventures are built on the idea that we can use business to solve social issues--and make money while we're at it! In short--social ventures fall at the intersection of capitalism and altruism--wanting to do something good and still make a living while you're at it. Business is one of the most powerful forces in the world, and when we apply business principles and skills to issues like poverty alleviation, healthcare, water shortages, and environmental sustainability--there is the potential for tremendous social impact.

BYU students have a long history of entrepreneurship--with a fantastic Business Plan Competition and incredibly successful student start-ups. We believe that BYU students can combine this entrepreneurial spirit and talent with our desire to do good, and come up with game-changing ideas to solve our world's most pressing problems.

Come check out our meeting this Tuesday and begin to get plugged into the social venture landscape. Our purpose is to help you become a part of a social venture and to launch that venture successfully. For more information, take a look at these incredible social entrepreneurs and their ideas on how to make a huge difference:

VisionSpring: http://www.visionspring.org/about/our-story.php

D.Light Design: http://www.dlightdesign.com/

Virgance: http://www.virgance.com/about.php (**Note: 2 BYU students interned here last summer and had a ROCKIN' time! And 6 BYU students are doing an on-campus internship with Virgance this semester! We are working hard to get you plugged in to this space--reach out and we'll get you connected!)

Feel free to reach out with any questions, and we look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday night!

Students for Social Entrepreneurship

Students.For.SocEnt@gmail.com

801.636.6686 OR 801.319.4944

Business Plan Idea

For those that are struggling to come up with a business idea, Prof. Richards has an opportunity to work with a business restart that needs help with a business plan. The following PDF explains more about the opportunity. Contact Prof. Richards (john.richards@byu.edu) for more information.

Click here for the PDF

Announcement from Prof. Richards

To: Creating New Ventures Class students

This article is interesting. This is precisely where you need to find your business ideas. For example, as I read this article, I am thinking that an entrepreneur could set up a web site with a good URL name, have it be a centralized repository for legal consent for organ donation. Hospitals and others would consult this database to see if a recently deceased or artificially preserved person is on the list and has given consent. There are lots of ancillary revenue centers that could be built off this.

OrganRegistry.com would be, for instance, a name. Or OrgansRUS.com, or even some crazy name.

I have done no Google searching, domain look up, or anything for this.

But, this is an example of a low capital business where you make a free service and get it to go viral on the net and then start introducing revenue streams as you get to some critical mass on usage. this company could lead the young people of the world to register in droves. Eventually deals could be had with governments, corporations, the medical community, pharmaceutical companies, etc. Big money.

I am not sure of the laws surrounding this, but it's worth some research.

This took me about 15 minutes of thought. Just wanted to share my thought process.

- Prof Richards

-----------------------

September 27, 2009

Economic View

OPTING IN VS. OPTING OUT

By RICHARD H. THALER

WHEN Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, appeared in public recently for the first time in months, he revealed that he had received a liver transplant from the victim of a car crash. “I wouldn’t be here without such generosity,” Mr. Jobs said, adding that he hoped that many people would become organ donors.

With the help of a little behavioral economics, it is possible to make that hope a reality.

More than 20,000 organ transplants take place every year in the United States, with a vast majority coming from deceased donors. Demand greatly exceeds supply: in 2006, for example, 3,916 patients died while waiting for kidneys, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

Some economists have come up with a simple solution: a market allowing the buying and selling of organs. Because people have two kidneys and need only one to live, a robust market could greatly increase supply.

The idea may have some merit, but it is spectacularly unpopular. As the Harvard economist Alvin Roth has noted, many people consider it “repugnant,” mainly for two reasons. First, they object to the possibility of rich people buying their way to the front of the line. (The hospital where Mr. Jobs’s procedure took place said he received the liver transplant because he was the sickest person on its waiting list who matched the donor’s blood type.) Second, they object to incentives that would induce the poor to sell their kidneys.

These objections can lead to some logical quandaries. Why, for example, is it O.K. for a parent to donate a kidney to save a child’s life but not for her to sell her kidney, thereby also saving a life? And why is it acceptable to risk your life for money, say, by becoming a coal miner, but not by selling a kidney?

Still, whether you think a legal market for organs is a brilliant or a dreadful idea, it’s a political nonstarter, so it is important to obtain donors from another possible source: patients who have been declared “brain dead” but are being kept alive temporarily.

Nationwide, roughly 12,000 to 15,000 people fall into this category each year, but only half end up as donors. Because each such donor could supply an average of three organs, having another thousand donors could save 3,000 lives. We need more people to agree to be donors in advance.

One strategy is to alter the default rules for signup. Most states, as well as many other countries, use an “opt in” or “explicit consent” rule, meaning that people must take a concrete action, like going to a public library or requesting and mailing in a form, to declare they want to be donors. But many who are willing to donate organs never get around to such steps.

An alternative approach, used in several European countries, is an “opt out” rule, often called “presumed consent,” in which citizens are presumed to be consenting donors unless they act to register their unwillingness.

In the world of traditional economics, it shouldn’t matter whether you use an opt-in or opt-out system. So long as the costs of registering as a donor or a nondonor are low, the results should be similar. But many findings of behavioral economics show that tiny disparities in such rules can make a big difference.

By comparing the consent rates in European countries, the psychologists Eric Johnson and Dan Goldstein have shown that the choice of opting in or opting out is a major factor.

Consider the difference in consent rates between two similar countries, Austria and Germany. In Germany, which uses an opt-in system, only 12 percent give their consent; in Austria, which uses opt-out, nearly everyone (99 percent) does.

Although presumed consent is generally accepted in countries that have adopted it, the idea can bring strong opposition. Many people object to anyone presuming anything about their organs, even if the costs of opting out are low. In Britain, a proposal by the Labour government to adopt an opt-out system was opposed by Muslims who objected to organ removal on religious grounds.

Fortunately, there is another possibility, called “mandated choice,” under which people must indicate their preference. In Illinois, where I live, this system has been in use since 2006 and doesn’t seem to have ruffled many feathers.

Here is how it works: When you go to renew your driver’s license and update your photograph, you are required to answer this question: “Do you wish to be an organ donor?” The state now has a 60 percent donor signup rate, according to Donate Life Illinois, a coalition of agencies. That is much higher than the national rate of 38 percent reported by Donate Life America

The Illinois system has another advantage. There can be legal conflicts over whether registering intent is enough to qualify you as an organ donor or whether a doctor must still ask your family’s permission. In France, for example, although there is technically a presumed-consent law, in practice doctors still seek relatives’ approval. In Illinois, the First-Person Consent Law, which created this system, makes one’s wishes to be a donor legally binding. Thus, mandated choice may achieve a higher rate of donations than presumed consent, and avoid upsetting those who object to presumed consent for whatever reasons. This is a winning combination.

THE key, however, is to make signup easy, and requiring people to make a choice is just one way to accomplish it. The private sector could help create other simple methods. Here is a challenge to Mr. Jobs: Why not create a Web site — and a free app for theiPhone — that lets people sign up as organ donors in their home states?

At the same time, he’d need to work with the states to create the technology for a secure, simple signup procedure. Social networking sites like Facebook could also help, by encouraging signup campaigns.

Many Americans say they want to be organ donors, but they just don’t get around to acting on their intentions. Helping these potential good Samaritans overcome their inertia could prolong thousands of lives a year. Signing up to be an organ donor should be at least as easy as downloading a song to your iPhone.

Richard H. Thaler is a professor of economics and behavioral science at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

9 Steps/Strategic Plan Assignment

Because Dr. Strong has not been able to complete the lecture concerning the 9 Steps/Strategic Plan assignment, the due date has been extended until next Monday, Oct. 5. He will finish lecturing on it on Wednesday. For those who have already turned it in, you may resubmit it after Dr. Strong's lecture if you would like to do so.

Type of Entity

Because the Type of Entity lecture was not completed on Monday, the due date has been extended to next Monday (Sept. 28). Also remember that the Founding Capitalization Table is also due on that day.

Prof. Richards wanted me to forward this article to the class.

- John Jr, TA

September 21, 2009

Patent Auctions Offer Protections to Inventors

By STEVE LOHR

The world can be a rough place for independent inventors. They can often find themselves in court, battling big corporations, spending piles of money on lawyers and leaving it up to judges and juries to determine the value of their hard-won patents.

That could be changing. Wrangling over patents is beginning to move out of the courtroom and into the marketplace. A flurry of new companies and investment groups has sprung up to buy, sell, broker, license and auction patents. And venture capital andprivate equity is starting to pour into the field.

The arrival of these new business-minded players, according to patent experts and economists, could lead to a robust marketplace for patents, where value is determined not so much by court judgments but by buyers and sellers, perhaps, someday, likeeBay.

And patents, after all, are ideas. Any market mechanisms that speed up the process of figuring out what a patent is worth should hasten the flow of ideas into the economy, accelerating the pace of innovation, policy experts say.

“What you want is a market that can promote innovation and reduce the huge costs of litigation,” said Robert P. Merges, a professor at the University of California, Berkeleyand a director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. “And that market is starting to take shape.”

A classic small-inventor firm, Zoltar Satellite Alarm Systems, is planning to sample that market by auctioning off its patents next month. Professor Merges and other patent experts point to it as an intriguing case to watch.

To date, the Zoltar story has been one of innovation, persistence and litigation. One founder of the company, Dr. Daniel Schlager, got his inspiration nearly two decades ago, crouched in medevac helicopters flying over Northern California. Locating people in distress was often difficult and costly, in time and lives. What was needed, he figured, was some sort of personal alarm device that transmitted a person’s location.

He sought out an old high-school classmate, William Baringer, a computer scientist and telecommunications expert. Using global positioning technology seemed promising, even though it was clunky and expensive at the time. They came up with a solution, and filed their first patent application in 1994 for a “personal alarm” device that used GPS technology. A year later, Zoltar was founded, and it filed for a patent on personal alarms with navigational receivers in cellphones that was granted in 1997.

Zoltar’s prospects got a lift after the Federal Communications Commission in 1996 required most wireless phones to be able to identify their location during 911 calls by 2001. The move opened a large potential market for Zoltar.

The two men designed and built prototypes, hired a patent licensing expert and showed their technology to cellphone equipment makers in the late 1990s in the hopes of licensing it. “It’s an industry with huge companies who crosslicense patents with each other and tell little guys to take a hike,” said Robert Megantz, a former general manager of licensing for Dolby and the consultant who worked with Zoltar in the late 1990s.

Eventually, Zoltar’s founders say, their ideas and designs started to turn up in big companies’ products. They raised money, mostly from friends and family, hired lawyers and went to court.

In 2001, Zoltar sued Qualcomm, the cellphone chip-set maker. After three years, a jury found that Zoltar’s patents were valid, but that Qualcomm was not infringing on them. The two sides settled in 2006.

In 2005, Zoltar sued several handset makers including Motorola, LG and Samsung, and settlements were reached with all of them by 2007.

By now, Zoltar has spent millions in legal fees, and collected millions in settlements. The company is ahead financially, Dr. Schlager said, but some of its 60 investors have not been paid back. Mr. Baringer remains a full-time consultant engineer, and Dr. Schlager is still an emergency-room physician, though he does not practice full time.

Today, the fast-growing makers of smartphones like Research in Motion, Apple, HTC andNokia have no agreements with Zoltar. Dr. Schlager said he did not plan to sue them. Instead Zoltar will sell its patents in an auction, hoping for a faster, simpler and less risky payoff.

“We felt this was the way to go,” Dr. Schlager said. “It’s an option that wasn’t available a few years ago.”

The auction will be run by Pluritas, a patent broker based in San Francisco. Robert Aronoff, its managing director, says Zoltar has strong, court-tested patents that apply to a huge industry, at a time when there is an increasingly brisk market for intellectual property. “They are entering into this vastly changed marketplace with a hot property,” he said.

Whether the patents will prove to be a hot property is not clear. “They were certainly innovative over the years, but I do think there is a question here if the industry and technology has passed them by,” said Professor Merges of Berkeley.

Mr. Baringer insists this is not the case. “We continue to see our designs and concepts implemented every day” in smartphones, he said.

In an auction, of course, the patents’ value will be judged by bidders, which could be handset makers, but also patent-buying groups like Intellectual Ventures and Rational Patent Exchange and Allied Security Trust, a nonprofit organization.

Other players in the emerging patent marketplace are specialized investment banks, brokers and licensing companies including Acacia Technologies, Altitude Capital Partners, Intertrust, IPotential, Ocean Tomo, Rembrandt IP Management and Thinkfire. Venture capitalists are also interested in this field — Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for example, is backing Rational Patent Exchange, a company that buys reservoirs of patents in crucial fields and charges fees to corporate “members,” who participate as a defensive tactic to limit potential patent litigation costs.

The long-term vision at Rational, said Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner, is to become a marketplace or clearinghouse, perhaps the way Ascap is for copyrighted music, collecting fees and distributing payments to artists.

“The goal is to be a place where the patentholder is fairly compensated, but the corporate users have access to technology with minimal transaction costs,” Mr. Komisar said. “It has the potential to make innovation more efficient and less risky for both sides.”

But some patent experts question how far the marketplace model can be extended to patents. They note that patents are typically trickier to value than financial investments like stocks or bonds.

“Yes, you can move in the direction of trading markets for patents, but these are complicated assets that are individualized and hard to value,” said Josh Lerner, an economist at the Harvard business school. “They are more like works of art than stocks.”

Syllabus Due Date Mistake

There is a mistake on the syllabus. The "Founding Capitalization Table" assignment is listed as being due on Wed, Sept 23. This is incorrect. This assignment is due Mon, Sept 28. Sorry for the confusion.

Assignments

Just a reminder about submitting assignments.

Remember to follow the naming conventions in the syllabus for both the subject of the email as well as the name of the file. This helps a lot with the organization of the emails and helps get grades online faster.

Also, remember that if you did not receive a confirmation email a few minutes after submitting your assignment, then something got messed up. Either the email never reached the mfg479@gmail.com account OR there was nothing attached to the email. In either case be sure to double check the attachment and email address and resubmit it.

Sorry Blackboard is being crazy with course files. Hopefully they can fix it over the weekend.

- John Jr, MFG479 TA

Utah Student 25 - Volunteers Needed!

The Utah Student 25 awards program that Prof. Richards announced earlier is looking for student volunteers to help with various aspects of the event. If you are interested check out the following means of communication:

Website: http://utah25.siliconslopes.com/

Blog: http://utahstudent25.wordpress.com/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/utahstudent25

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/utahstudent25facebook

Twitter: http://twitter.com/utstudent25

You could also ask Prof. Richards to get you in touch with those in charge of the event.

Crunch Lunch Event at Novell Sept. 10

Prof. Richards asked me to announce this to the class.

When: Thursday, Sept. 10

Time: 12pm-1:30pm

Where: Novell Cafeteria

Cost: Members free, Visitors $25, Students, $10

Crunch Lunch is an event where 10 presenters discuss in rapid-fire, 5 minute intervals about business ideas, topics, advice, etc.

The theme tomorrow is Starting a Business From Start to Finish, which might help with writing your business plans later this semester.

They are allowing students in for only $10, price includes lunch at Novell cafeteria and raffle drawings.

See the flyer for more information like individual presenters.

MFG479 Blog and RSS Feed

I have created a class blog at mfg479.blogspot.com. This is for the benefit of those who use news readers and subscribe to RSS feeds. This is not meant to replace Blackboard, but simply supplement Blackboard's lack of RSS support. Only Blackboard announcements will be posted on the blog. You may comment on these announcements, but do not expect the comments to be checked on a regular basis, it would be best to still use the mfg479@gmail.com email to receive the quickest response to questions or concerns.

Confused about what I am even talking about? Read about RSS Feeds at www.whatisrss.com.

Thanks

- John Jr, TA