—– Original Message —–

From: Salvador Minguijon

To: Salvador Minguijon

Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 7:43 PM

Subject: “Pay as you drive” Information.

Dear Gentlemen:

Firstly, I want to openly recognize the work carried out by Robert Ledger, which has lead the project “Pay As You Drive” in the last years.

I believe that we are all aware of the tremendous effort that Norwich Union is carrying out to make this project viable. It is escaping from the temptation of being focused to small market segments, where at a shorter term more profitability could be obtained.

A part of this merit belonges to Robert Ledger’s professional perseverance. He can face all type of difficulties, with the typical spirit of the pioneers. Now Norwich has designated him other responsibilities that they estimate to find more valuable. Us, those who are linked to this project, will miss him.

The announcement of the project DriveTime of More Than (of the group Royal and Sun Alliance) has surprised us. It is practically the same solution that Norwich Union has rehearsed during the last years, and whose satisfactory results as for smaller use of the vehicle and probability of accidents had made public.

It has surprised us because to protect their efforts in the project “Pay As You Drive”, Norwich had unchained a strategy of industrial protection with patents that is a world model for the companies of services. We can´t forget that it had the advice of Progressive and IBM.

The effectiveness of the patents seemed suitable, because no company had dared to begin similar activities neither in USA neither in England, countries which patents belong to Progressive and Norwich respectively. We suppose that Royal and Sun Alliance will have to abandon their project. The patents exist to protect the development efforts in front of companies with commercial aggressiveness and we don´t have any doubt that Norwich will defend this right until the end.

In the same way, it is necessary to remember that patents also exist in Italy, Germany, France and Spain. In which there is not any excusive licence yet.

As much in Italy as in Germany, which are countries in those that there are several companies working in projects of this type, it surprises that many of them have not even considered this aspect. They are building their projects in the air or at least without having the security that the land is firm or that it doesn’t belong to anybody. 

Of course, I have upgraded the site “Pay As You Drive Directory“.

Yours sincerely.

                                                                                            Salvador Minguijon Perez.