I've been away for a bit, physically and otherwise, but have am back from vacation and spent some time down at the clerk's office of the bankruptcy court in San Jose today. Apropos to an ongoing discussion of a week or so ago - At 07:20 PM 12/16/98 -0500, Robert Hettinga wrote: [...]
Of course, we'll find out the real answers to all of this when the Chapter 11 filing is actually final. Right now, I hear that there's nothing there but a placeholder filing, with no actual assets listed in detail, much less whether they're secured by anything.
The filing is real - the court's file is up to about 400 pages, so I didn't get the whole thing, but the schedules (including a list of assets) have been filed. I'm in the process of digesting them into a website about the Digicash bankruptcy. A little birdie sent me a document which is purportedly the Dutch bankruptcy filing, and I'm looking for a translator. Volunteers? According to the documents filed with the court, Digicash Inc. has assets of $51,649, and liabilities of $3,068,076.49. The breakdown is as follows: Real estate $0 Personal property $51,649 Secured claims ($123,438.09) Unsecured priority claims ($279,500.60) Unsecured nonpriority claims ($2,665,137.80) Personal property includes $5,595.00 in cash, $23,220 in advance payments on leases or security deposits, $5,750 in accounts receivable, and $17,084 in office supplies, furniture, and equipment. Secured claims includes $73,449.56 for/secured by computer equipment, $12,362 for/secured by a copier, and $37,626.53 for/secured by office furniture, fittings, etc. Unsecured priority claims are for wages & commissions owed to employees and independent sales agents, for amounts earned in the 90 days prior to bankruptcy, maxing out at $4300 per person entitled to priority. Unsecured nonpriority claims are everything else - including a bridge loan from August Capital for $825,941.00, a bridge loan from the Glide IT Fund for $386,325.18, legal fees of $103,756 to Gunderson Dettmer, $53,143.25 to Netscape (apparently a software license, marked as disputed), a bridge loan from Nicholas Negroponte for $193,735.20, legal fees of $25,103.29 to Nixon & Vanderhyde of Washington DC (patent attorneys, who were kind enough to file detailed legal bills with their proof of claim), a bridge loan from Paul Van Keep of $61,698.36, legal fees of $20,635.59 to Steinhauser Hoogenraad of the Netherlands, a bridge loan of $581,339.77 from Tech. For Information and Entertainment III LP of Lexington MA, and a bridge loan of $7242.35 from Thomas Little of Nashua NH. (there are also a fair number of small to medium trade debts which I haven't listed here.) The IP listed as assets (but not assigned a value in the amounts shown above) include these patents: (all are US patents) 5,712,913 Limited-traceability systems 5,781,631 Limited-traceability systems 5,493,614 Private signature and proof systems 5,485,520 Automatic real-time highway toll collection from moving vehicles [listed twice] 5,434,919 Compact endorsement signature systems 5,373,558 Desinated[sic]-confirmer signature systems 5,276,736 Optionally moderated transaction systems 5,131,039 Optionally moderated transaction systems 4,996,711 Selected-exponent signature systems 4,991,210 Unpredictable blind signature systems 4,987,593 One-show blind signature systems 4,949,380 Returned-value blind signature systems 4,947,430 Undeniable signature systems 4,926,480 Card-computer moderated systems 4,914,698 One-show blind signature systems 4,759,064 Blind unanticipated signature systems 4,759,063 Blind signature systems 4,529,870 Cryptographic identification, financial transaction, and credential device The IP list also mentions that DigiCash holds copyrights to software in the US and abroad, without providing further detail. Digicash holds or has filed for trademarks on the terms "DIGICASH" and "ECASH" in the following jurisdictions: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Germany, European Community, Finland, Israel, India, Iceland, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Malaysia, Norway, New Zealand, Phillipines, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States. They have also filed for (not all are approved or registered) the following trademarks in the US: CRYPTOPAY, CYBER DOLLAR, CYBER PAY, CYBER$, CYBER-BUCKS, CYBER-CASH, CYBERCHEQUE, CYBERMILES, DATACOIN, DIGI$, DIGI-CASH, DIGI-DOLLAR, DIGIBANK, DIGICASH, DIGICOIN, DIGIPAY, E$, E-CASH, E-COIN, E-DOLLAR, E-MONEY, E-PAY, E-VOTE, ECREDIT, EGIRO, EMILES, EWIRE, EYECASH/ICASH, FIRST DIGITAL BANK, KIDCASH, MONEY MAN, MONEY MEDIA, NET-CASH, NET-PAY, PAY-AS-YOU-GO, TELEPAY, V-BANK, V-CASH, V-COIN, V-MONEY, V-PAY, V-SHOP, VIRTUAL CASH, VIRTUAL COIN. There's no discussion of foreign patents, which seems peculiar - the legal bills from the patent attorneys included amounts for foreign associates, with legal bills for Japanese patent matters sticking out in particular. As far as I can tell, Digicash Inc. (the US corp) was formed in 1990; the Netherlands and Australian corps are/were subsidiaries of the US corp. The filing discloses the following historical financial data - Year Sales 1998 $134,842 1997 $ 10,000 Year Income 1998 $23,161 interest 1998 $ 2,580 sale of assets 1997 $53,464 interest The other item which may be of interest is that the IP portfolio has been pledged as collateral for a post-filing bridge loan obtained from most of the funders who are owed the $2M unsecured; I was hoping to trade files with someone else (whom I haven't been able to meet with yet) so I didn't get a copy of that filing, but I seem to remember that the postfiling bridge loan, approved by the court, was for $330K, which will be paid back from the proceeds of the sale of DigiCash's assets. I'm hoping to work all of this up into a more comprehensive presentation, but that's going to take another week or two at least. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@netbox.com PGP: 0x26E4488C