7/2/07

More On Local.com (LOCM)

The stock market finally took notice of the patent award announcement on June 25th due to a blog post on Seeking Alpha on June 29. The stock responded by rising roughly 80% .

Today the company announced they were awarded an additional patent that may hold a deeper meaning for the financial future of the company and indeed all paid local search.

Pay attention to the last line below;

Quotes from Local.com CEO Heath Clarke via From Sys-Com Media;

"In our view, the burgeoning free 411 marketplace is being underwritten by a variety of advertising supported models. Our patent 7,200,413 is directly related to a referral advertising model such as pay-per-click or pay-per-call listings, which are delivered to consumers as a result of an enhanced directory assistance inquiry or local search, where the results can be provided to consumers via many mobile channels, including voice," said Heath Clarke, Chairman and CEO, Local.com.

"Our recently announced patent 7,231,405 was related to the methods used to deliver our highly relevant organic search results. Patent number 7,200,413 is complementary to our local search patent in that it provides us with intellectual property coverage for what's now a widely accepted monetization method -- pay-per-referral -- within the directory assistance marketplace. Local.com believes that ad-supported directory assistance is the future of 411 services in the U.S., and we look forward to working with a variety of companies to deliver innovative new products and services to the marketplace," continued Clarke. "We encourage directory assistance and free 411 companies that are interested in using our intellectual property to enter into licensing agreements with Local.com."

That could be industry changing. The stock responded today by moving up another 55% as of this posting.

Oddly none of the prominent local search marketing industry writers have chimed in with opinions on this second patent yet.

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