Who will buy these wonderful patents?

Toshiba Corp said the sale of intellectual property rights could garner up to 100 billion yen ($870 million) by 2003, and the Japanese giant announced yesterday that it will sell designs drawn from several business units, including PC and data storage. The company is making definitive moves to control its research and development overheads in view of an anticipated 25 billion yen loss ($217 million) for the first half. Some IT designs will be sold to Toshiba’s competitors and a wider range of intellectual properties will be on offer to Toshiba’s 300 partners and subsidiaries. Spokesman Takashi Tanaka told Bloomberg that the world’s largest manufacturer of notebook computers must take steps to cover its R&D costs. He said that the R&D budget is being slimmed by around four per cent, down to 310 billion yen. ®