![]() In public documents, the company claims that its workforce still includes around 200 engineers, though the bulk of its revenues are from licensing, including patent litigation. (Hill, Tessera and Starboard did not respond to requests to comment on this story.) One explanation may be that Tessera was not gutted in the way Hill feared. It’s unclear why he changed his mind and embraced the vanquishers. Even though his prayers were not answered, Hill stuck around, returning to reclaim his earlier role as the chairman of the board, now populated with the invaders from Starboard. ![]() But the other shoe - the departure of Rick Hill - never hit the carpet. Starboard won its board seats, and indeed ramped up the patent monetization. As chairman and interim CEO of that company, Tessera Technologies Inc., and as a man who spent my adult life creating stockholder value by serving customers in the marketplace rather than bushwhacking defendants in court, I pray that our stockholders vote no.Ī funny thing happened after that. corporate history, stockholders of a public company will vote on May 23 on whether to turn a technology innovator into a patent troll. "We happen to be at the point in our business cycle where what’s left is a patent portfolio."įor perhaps the first time in U.S. "You can call us anything you like," Unwired Planet general counsel Noah Mesel told Bloomberg. People called it a patent troll, an appellation its executives shrugged off. In its Unwired Planet incarnation, there were 16 people, devoted to wringing dollars from previous patents and another portfolio it acquired from Ericsson, in exchange for a cut of the booty. Before Starboard, Openwave was a firm with as many as 2200 employees and was devoted to developing products. It moved the firm to Reno, changed its named to Unwired Planet, and set about making money from its IP. ![]() In 2010, Starboard targeted the company and eventually gained control, installing one of its partners as chairman. Before Starboard’s interest the company made messaging software for mobile operators. Case in point is a company once known as Openwave. Starboard is also not above pushing the companies it controls or influences into behavior associated with more toxic patent shenanigans, like classic patent trolling. After that happens, it will presumably figure out how to best turn the company’s shares in the Chinese commerce giant Alibaba and its stake in Yahoo Japan into shareholder value, in a way that legally minimizes any taxes the United States of America might collect on the machinations. Let’s take it as a given that Starboard will push Mayer to hasten the previously announced sell-off of its media assets and services, aka the core business. The question I’d like to explore is just how it will go about doing this. This hedge fund is not about putting a dent in the universe, a goal to which techies often aspire, but about putting bulges in its partners’ wallets, a goal to which hedge funds always aspire. Do not look for Jeffery Smith to coo over slides celebrating Mayer’s achievements in mobile revenue, or obsess over the design of a new weather app. Let’s state the obvious: Starboard is not in this game because it wants to restore Yahoo to its glory as one of the fearsome horsemen of tech. Instead of vigorously opposing the move, she agreed to include Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith and three of his allies. The hedge fund Starboard Value LP had been attempting to replace the Yahoo board with its own slate of directors. (CNBC/Getty Images) Last week Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s continuing efforts to salvage the once-dominant Internet power involved a strategic retreat. Jeffrey Smith, CEO of Starboard Value LP speaks at a CNBC conference last July. What does the hedge fund now on Marissa Mayer’s board plan to do with it? The company’s intellectual property is worth billions.
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