- 427 -
to another stage to bring it to a commercial product
that will be put on the shelf.
And I can't tell you now what might have
conceivably been developed were this product research
and development to have been successful or gone far
enough, but it was our impression and understanding at
this time that it either would--or could produce
something significant and allow for future research and
licensing or something significant enough to be an
actual product that could be commercial manufactured.
[Emphasis added.]
The Court: But there have been no developments of
these other rights that you are talking about?
[Kanter]: Well, those rights existed. There was
no preclusion of the rights as far as I know, that
nobody took them away in the form of defined patent
rights.
It remains unclear to the Court just what those "rights"
might be. The Court is skeptical that, in the everyday world, an
investor would pay $980,000 for a bundle of ambiguous property
rights, as to which there is no persuasive indication that such
rights could be exploited or developed.
Moreover, this Court's holding in Estate of Cook was not
premised upon IRC's holding no ownership rights whatsoever in the
research, as Kanter implies. Rather in Estate of Cook, this
Court concluded, after considering the totality of the facts and
circumstances, including certain highly relevant factors, that
there was no realistic prospect of IRC's entering into a trade or
business to exploit the technology being developed under the IRC-
Newport R&D and License Agreement.
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