PATENTS & LICENSES -- Covering Their Assets

"With patents in general, your options are to ignore them, fight them or negotiate a license," Pflug points out. "It comes down to an elementary business analysis of the costs involved.

"Since ImageX had a backlog of 50-plus patents that it had applied for, we simply made a business decision that it was in the best interest of the company, its shareholders and customers to proceed with a licensing agreement rather than trying to fight one or more of those patents," he continues. "The fact that you license a patent is not necessarily a comment on the validity or value of the patent."