Teilhard v. Teilhard

Here's another open thread for the furious controversy related to JuxtaComm v. Ascential, et al, over whether Teilhard management is screwing its shareholders or not. The previous unsuccessful thread is here.

Vincent McBurney has closed his latest blog post to comments, and the concerned shareholders don't have their shit together enough to have much of anything to show at their domain.

Meanwhile, I've been having some fun on Vincent's site:

Pete, everyone can judge from what we write respectively which one of us is an {orifice that emits farts}.

For your own benefit, you might reread what I wrote. I didn't make a claim about the correct result of patent review. I only made objective statements about what the USPTO has done and on what grounds.

InfoPump, among other products, is prior art. It's undeniably prior, and it's undeniably relevant. If JuxtaComm was aware of it, JuxtaComm acted in bad faith in omitting it. (The past defendants dropped that contention; another defendant may nonetheless press it.) InfoPump is undeniably not mentioned in '662. Undeniable if, that is, you've actually read '662...

Now, the PTO has to judge whether the newly discovered prior art invalidates '662 (discovered in the legal sense). Of course I think it does, but I didn't say that in my answer to RMB. You just can't read well enough to have understood that without detailed explanation.

And then you laughed at your own juvenile joke! Great. Why not patent fart jokes and sue Howard Stern?

This was in answer to CuriousPete's (though IncuriousPete would be more accurate handle) response to this objective content.

I also gave comfort to the management shills, though I wish I hadn't had to:

If TH management is going to take 35% and AG is going to take 10% of a total settlement of US$200 million (plus or minus $50 million), yeah, it looks as though outside shareholders are getting screwed. If.

It looks as though they're getting a pat on the head and thanks for the use of your money; we don't need it anymore 'cause we're RICH!

But there's not much evidence for any of that yet. That, of course, is the problem. The plausible reason for there not being much evidence - the ongoing legal maneuvering - is over. In fairness, I'm sure TH needs some time to get their announcement right even if it's totally above-board. The end of this week is really not too late.

I'll freely admit I don't know Canadian law on business organization, but from general principles, it looks to me as if the outside shareholders are just waking up to the possibility (not yet a known fact) that they were screwed from the get-go.

Here's the even worse problem they have: From the sketch that's available, it looks as though TH management and their friendly board crossed the Ts and dotted the Is. Their grab (alleged grab) looks blessed by the formalities. Where investors went wrong (if they did) was investing in a company with such a management-heavy board, which they then counted on to protect them from management's sense of its own entitlement!

That could mean they have to prove securities fraud in the sale, based on remembered statements about all the bobbies that would come rolling in from the big dumb suckers in charge of the world's largest software companies. But I'd bet all investors had to sign a disclaimer that the text of the purchase agreement was all the buyer could rely on, that anything else was forward-looking statements blah blah blah.

Which means that I think the outside investors are going to be out of luck, and this blog's management shills, despite being obviously some of the nastiest people in Alberta, are going to win this controversy.

(By the way, I doubt TH management sent the shills. If TH did that, their shills would be trying to foster calm discussions, instead of roiling the waters with stridency, bile, and demands that everyone not stoned on Kool-Aid STFU. In short, they would have been more like Steelhard the First. But no...)

Last, I have comment moderation turned on for reasons that have nothing to do with this case.

Update: Made this easier to Google by including the name of the case.