—– Original Message —–

From: Salvador Minguijon

To: Salvador Minguijon

Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 4:50 PM

Subject: “Pay as you drive” Information

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

    Finally, there was no bid in the auction of the patent EP0700009 carried out in Munich the day May 15.

    We know that the possible clients didn`t have enough time to analyze the topic depthly due to their complexity, to the relationship of rights and obligations with regard to Norwich Union that are acquired with the own patent and to the novelty that represents for the insurance companies the topic of the intellectual property.

    In this last aspect, it will facilitate the work the fact that it has been published the evaluation that Taeus Ingineering Intellectual Property has carried out on this patent.

    In my article “New auction round of Patent EP0700009”, I make a little more detailed analysis of this topic.

    We will have to wait to see definitively who is the proprietor of this patent in Italy, Spain, France and Germany. Meanwhile, considering seriously the risks and opportunities that represents having or not the ownership of this patent, I don’t believe that no company of insurance wants to make an important investment to market this project in these countries.

    I suppose that nobody will dare to make it in England, facing the proprietor of the patent in that country Norwich Union, that will defend their development efforts with all the necessary resources.

    But the biggest doubt in the insurance companies is not the the risk of infringing rights of patents, but rather they don’t have the certainty that what they want to make is legal and that it doesn’t infringe some individual right.

    We had already commented last month that L’Argus de l’Assurance had organized an event for June 28, of which we hope to obtain concrete information to this respect.

    As reference it is interesting to know the directive defined by the CNIL for the use of telematic devices in professional vehicles.

    On the other hand Swiss-Re, which is structuring a project without GPS neither telephony very similar to the Tripsense of Progressive, organizes a similar event in which we will know the opinion of the Swiss DSI.

    Forrester Reseach and Researchandmarkets presents their new studies. The former refering to the projects “Pay as you drive” and the latter to the widest telematic concept.

    Uniqua presents its project for Austria, developed with the participation of IBM and that  reminds us in great way to that of Norwich Union, as it incorporates diverse services such as E-Call, in-car asssistance, anti-theft and even for professionals a fleet management system.

    The forecast is that this product begins to be marketed in autumn of this year.

    Norwich Union goes a step forward and it begins to explore the interaction possibilities with the client that the project “Pay as you drive” presents and that they should be the key to improve the fixation of the market, to give him value added to its service and to make more attractive the product for its clients.

    This is a symptom that the project is entering in a phase of maturity that will be reached when, using these same tools, the insurance companies are able to influence in the attitude of their clients when they use the vehicles.     
 

    I have upgrade my database Pay as you drive directory.

    If somebody wants thar their address is erased of my distribution list, please return me this message with the word “DELETE”.

    Yours sincerely.

    Salvador Minguijon Perez.

New auction round of patent EP0700009

The patent auction celebrated on May 15 in Munich, with an initial
price of 1.500.000 Euro, was void, as many companies could not register
on time, resulting in no bids.

In theory there were companies with interest in acquiring the patent
to structure their future projects in Europe, and there are also some
that need it to be able to market projects in which they have already
made big investments.

It is necessary to keep in mind that practically all the projects,
certainly all the significant ones, that are developing at the moment
are very likely to be infringing some of the claims of the patent, no
matter if they use GPS, GSM or another system of transfer of data, etc.

However at this stage, there was not enough participation in the
auction to sell the patent above the reserve price, leaving perplexed
the specialists in patents.

An important factor is, that the insurance companies don’t have
experience in the area of intellectual property and therefore find it
very difficult to make a firm decision. The impacts of ownig the
patent and even more, the possible consequences of not owning the
patent are very complex to assess.

“From some important companies in the field we have been told that
more time for due diligence is needed. This gives us a very good
perspective to successfully offer the patent in another auction
round.” says Boris Peters from IP Auctions.

Especially technology companies have to deal with the fact, that the
PAYD-patent provides protection for an application rather than nuclear
technical knowledge.

“The future owner of the patent remains to be announced, but it will
be.” says Mr. Peters. Please send a brief message to the following
Email if you are interested in the further auction process and receive
updates on the following steps: peters@ip-auction.eu, subject: “PAYD”