This document highlights five key patents issued to Kappa Division that have never been incorporated into products. Paradoxically, these are more interesting to Omicron than the patents that were used. The market has tested the Kappa product line and found it wanting, which means that the other Kappa patents, the ones that were incorporated into products, are less valuable (although they should still be defended by Sigma Legal according to our usual practice).

The more general patents, if incorporated into Omicron's products, can result in dramatic increases in performance. See Allan Weinberg's preliminary results for an example of how effective they can be - especially the most widely applicable transformation, "pretzel."

The Omicron planning team believes these performance improvements are critical to any attempt to increase market share in the Far East/Pacific Rim territories.

Our Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) is that both Omega and Omicron would have full access to this technology. We believe that Omega's products, due to their smaller size, can't take full advantage of these performance improvements, but just as the Sigma Socket was shared, these patents are "theoretically" the property of all of Sigma for use as needed. However, Sigma's previous experience has shown that if theoretical improvements are not to languish in the lab, they need champions who will put them into production products. Ultimately, we should argue that Omicron is willing to put resources behind these patents and intends to take full advantage of them.

A related issue is custody of the skunk works where the patents were produced.