researcher59, Re: PLUS...
How much pull do you think the win over Ariba will give ePlus? Do you think the win will help ePlus sign licensing agreements w/ other companies? Here's an article that came out 1½ years ago where the writer say's ePlus has a strong patent, but didn't know if it would hold up in court. He also mentioned that probably over half of the E-procurement implementations out there are in violation of the patent.....
(Earnings didn't look all that bad, although I did sell a few shares on the open. After settlement and taxes, ePlus should be @ over $3 eps for fiscal y/e March 31, 2005. Cash increased and so did s/h equity.)....
EPlus Claims Patent For Electronic Sourcing
By Darrell Dunn, InformationWeek
InternetWeek
July 8, 2003
The question of intellectual property and patents is very much top of mind these days, what with the SCO Group's pursuit of licensing fees for Unix code it says has been misappropriated, and eBay Inc.'s being ordered to pay $35 million in compensatory damages to MercExchange LLC for violating three patents that its founder and CEO filed for in 1995.
Now vendors of electronic sourcing software may start to look a little more closely at supply-chain management specialist ePlus Inc., which earlier this year was awarded a patent that covers the fundamentals of electronic sourcing, nearly a decade after it was originally filed.
Although ePlus has yet to file a lawsuit alleging infringement of the patent, "we're keeping our eyes and ears open, and we'll make an appropriate decision to defend our rights," president Ken Farber says.
The patent, Farber says, establishes the basis for electronic sourcing systems with the capability of searching multiple vendor catalogs to compare pricing and product features, as well as make purchases. The technology is used in the company's Procure+ software, which lets customers track corporate disbursements and manage purchasing administration, as well as Content+, an automated method of aggregating catalog content.
Pierre Mitchell, an analyst with AMR Research, says the ePlus patent is strong, but he's not sure that having it affirmed will result in revenue through litigation. "It's very broadly applicable," he says. But "these things are very hard to enforce. Basically, probably over half of the E-procurement implementations out there are in violation of this patent. It is unlikely to generate any revenues just because of the amount of effort you have to put in to something like this to extract money from any one."
Having the patent in-house should, however, provide ePlus with greater visibility in the industry, and potential customers may be likely to give greater consideration to ePlus' offerings versus competitive solutions going forward, Mitchell said.
Farber says the technology has been instrumental in the company's overall business, and ePlus will continue to enhance it and provide the ability to do more sourcing of products. The company plans to provide analytics so customers can really monitor and manage what they're purchasing and from whom, "while maintaining a complete vendor table of record within a single catalog so that they can reconcile all their transactions with various vendors," Farber says.
The company in June reported record earnings of $9.7 million on revenue of $225 million for the fiscal year ended March 31. That compares to earnings of $9 million on revenue of $205 million in the previous fiscal year.
The information posted by 2morrowsGains is opinion only and should not to be taken as investment advice.
