The traditional business evaluation methods

Yesterday, a federal judge ordered Microsoft to pay Uniloc for its infringe on a patent owned by Uniloc for a price of:

$338 Million Dollars.

I will leave the fairness of the verdict to other readers. I would like to make two comments:

1. Microsoft apparently got the idea from Uniloc and then developed its own software. This is nothing rare at all.
   
   I wrote a comment post on why Move spurn Activerain.
   
   Just last summer, I had a Restaurant for sale and two brothers showed "strong" interests and asked all questions on how the restaurants operate. I got a feeling that they just want to "steal" some secrets. While I kindly refused to answer a few questions that I deemed as business secrets, the two brothers simply disappeared.
   
   This has been very common in the business brokerage industry and I often see business owners are prepared to deal with this kind of situation.
   
   Microsoft is no exception at all.
   
2. Microsoft made a deadly mistake not acquiring Uniloc at that time.
   
   At certain period during a business's development, it should become a strategy to acquire other businesses or to spin out some operations. For Microsoft, it has never been lack of cash. Uniloc is a company that was operational. Not a dead rock at all. So there is really no risk acquiring Uniloc. But they failed to do that.
   
   Merger & Acquisition has been used by all companies big or small, as an important strategy. Failure to do might easily kill a company.

Now, maybe modern business owners should learn this lesson from Microsoft.

Disclaimer:This article is prepared for information purposes only. While it is deemed accurate, we are not responsible for the accuracy of all articles posted in this section of our website. For most updated information, please contact any of our associate.