Back to GetFilings.com



Table of Contents

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

 


 

FORM 10-K

 

x   Annual Report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934

 

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2002 or

 

¨   Transaction Report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934

 

Commission File Number 1-13616

 

STORAGE COMPUTER CORPORATION

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)

 

Delaware

 

02-0450593

(State or other jurisdiction of
incorporation or organization)

 

(I.R.S. Employer
Identification No.)

11 Riverside Street, Nashua, New Hampshire

 

03062-1373

(Address of Principal Executive Offices)

 

(Zip Code)

 

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (603) 880-3005

 

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(b) of the act:

 

Title of each Class


 

Name of each Exchange on which Registered


Common Stock $0.001 par value

 

American Stock Exchange

 

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the act:

 

None

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.    Yes  x    No  ¨

 

Indicate by check mark if the disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of the registrant’s knowledge, in a definitive proxy or information statement incorporated in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendments to this Form 10-K.    x

 

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an accelerated filer (as defined in Exchange Act Rule 12b-2)    Yes  ¨    No  x

 

The aggregate market value of the common stock of the registrant held by non-affiliates was approximately $72,036,100 as of June 28, 2002, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter. On March 28, 2003 there were issued and outstanding 25,735,373 shares of the registrant’s common stock, with a par value of $0.001.

 

Because the calculation of shares of registrant’s voting stock held by non-affiliates requires a calculation of the number of shares held by affiliates, such figure, as shown on the cover page hereof, such calculation has been made solely on the basis of information, reports and notices filed by affiliates of the registrant under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All outstanding shares beneficially owned by executive officers and directors of the registrant or by any shareholder beneficially owning more than 5% of registrant’s common stock, as disclosed herein, were considered solely for purposes of this disclosure to be held by affiliates.

 

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED

BY REFERENCE

 

Part III incorporates by reference portions of the Company’s Proxy Statement for the Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held on July 9, 2003, which the Company intends to file within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2002.


Table of Contents

STORAGE COMPUTER CORPORATION

 

Securities and Exchange Commission
        Item Numbers and Description


  

Page


PART I

ITEM 1

  

Business

  

3

ITEM 2

  

Properties

  

9

ITEM 3

  

Legal Proceedings

  

9

ITEM 4

  

Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders

  

10

PART II

ITEM 5

  

Market for Registrant’s Common Equity and Related Stockholder Matters

  

11

ITEM 6

  

Selected Financial Data

  

12

ITEM 7

  

Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

  

13

ITEM 7A

  

Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosure About Market Risk

  

26

ITEM 8

  

Financial Statements and Supplementary Data

  

26

ITEM 9

  

Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure

  

26

PART III

ITEM 10

  

Directors and Executive Officers of the Registrant

  

27

ITEM 11

  

Executive Compensation

  

27

ITEM 12

  

Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Shareholder Matters

  

27

ITEM 13

  

Certain Relationships and Related Transactions

  

27

PART IV

ITEM 14

  

Controls and Procedures

  

28

ITEM 15

  

Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules and Reports on Form 8-K

  

28

 

2


Table of Contents

PART I

 

ITEM 1.    BUSINESS

 

The Company

 

Storage Computer Corporation (the “Company”, “SCC” or “we”) develops and manufactures advanced storage architectures to address the emerging needs of high-bandwidth and other “performance-impaired” applications.

 

Storage Computer’s technology supports a variety of applications including advanced database activities, wide area networked storage and sophisticated business continuity topologies including:

 

    Networked Attached Storage

 

    Storage Area Networks

 

    Direct Attached Storage

 

    Storage Wide Area Networking

 

Based upon advanced architectures, parallel processing hardware, and embedded, real-time operating system, we believe we have the industry’s most versatile collection of connectivity options. A single storage system can simultaneously support multiple heterogeneous hosts through any combination of connectivity interfaces, including NAS, SAN, FibreChannel, SCSI and IP. These high-end solutions also entail peer-to-peer connectivity, allowing high-speed volume connectivity and data transfer or replication over Fiber and OC12/48.

 

Through our Cyber product lines and patented storage software, these solutions support multiple open systems servers and are modular and scalable for future growth.

 

Our performance-optimized Virtual Storage ArchitectureTM, product line combines intelligent controller, disk drive, and memory technology with patented memory mapping techniques and a powerful real-time operating system to deliver high-performance and data protection across the mix of applications found in today’s open system environments.

 

Company History

 

The Company was incorporated in Delaware in 1991. Initial work began in late 1984 with the development of RAID (“Redundant Array of Independent Disks”) technologies within a predecessor company Cab-Tek, Inc. From 1984 to 1990, products at RAID levels 3, 4, 5 and 6 were developed and tested. Development then commenced on the Virtual Storage Architecture to overcome the performance bottlenecks inherent in other RAID implementations and to achieve fault tolerant storage without impeding performance. The resulting patented technology was transferred to the newly established Storage Computer Corporation in August 1991.

 

Products based upon the Company’s unique RAID technology began shipping to customer production sites in the second half of 1992. The Company pioneered the RAID 7 (patented) technology incorporated in our Virtual Storage Architecture, which formed the basis for our StorageSuite product family and is found in our OmniRaid products. Based upon this performance-optimized architecture, the product line combines high-end controller technology, disk drives, scalable centralized and distributed memory mechanisms, proprietary memory mapping techniques, and a real-time operating system to deliver high-performance, fault-tolerant storage solutions.

 

In September 2000, Storage Computer Corporation acquired CyberStorage Systems Corporation. This acquisition enabled us to expand the development of our advanced storage and server solutions to migrate into the Optical Networking world and brought us extensive technical expertise in the area of networking, optical interfaces, and advanced media delivery architectures. Founded in 1998, Cyber Storage Systems emerged as a

 

3


Table of Contents

strong provider of innovative Information Management Solutions for the Digital Communications marketplace and Hardware/Software, IP based, Multimedia (IVOD, Multicast, Telemedicine, Distance Learning, Training, Video Conferencing) solutions.

 

Beginning in 2001 and continuing through 2002, we began integrating the Virtual Storage Architecture onto the next-generation, advanced storage and server platforms. We are now in a position to rapidly advance into the next dimension of networked storage and server solutions. With product lines addressing the NAS (network attached storage), SAN (storage area networks), and DAS (direct attached storage) market spaces as well as solutions based on those product lines targeted to reduce the stress associated with “performance-impaired” applications.

 

Industry Overview

 

Although Internet usage and demand continues to grow significantly, the last several years have been tumultuous for the technology sector markets. Generally, telecommunications companies had several weak years with large companies declaring losses and even bankruptcy in a few cases. Technology companies have terminated tens of thousands of employees and have taken huge restructuring charges. Despite this, demand for data storage and manageability of that data continues to be on the forefront of corporate needs. Over the past 5+ years all markets have undergone a dramatic shift to new information processing modes, such as client/server computing incorporating enterprise databases, data warehousing, image processing, multi-media, video-on-demand, virtual reality processing and Internet/Intranet services. These application modes are continuing to increase demand for data storage that is scalable in terms of capacity, performance, connectivity and manageability.

 

The data storage market has itself gone through turmoil during the past several years. The events which occurred on September 11, 2001, created a strong focus on Business Continuance practices while the economy in general has forced companies to become more cost conscious within their IT data centers. Host computing platforms that continue to make quantum leaps in processing performance drive the market for high performance storage. We believe that users and networks will continue to demand high-performance storage systems to eliminate performance bottlenecks and to take full advantage of increased server/workstation processing power.

 

Significant market shifts have occurred over the past several years with increased focus on networking elements. Momentum has been gained in the deployment of Storage Area Networks (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS). Momentum in these areas is based on the implementation of advanced high speed networking technologies. With the increased deployment of Gigabit Ethernet as well as Optical networks, storage methods based on IP (Internet Protocol) networks is gaining strength. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that although the entire disk market was down in 2002, networked storage will account for 67% of disk storage systems by 2005.

 

Market Positioning

 

The Company is directly focused on the networked storage market. Our NAS (Network Attached Storage) appliance is now generally available. During 2000, we introduced the CyberBorg storage system, which is a high speed, high performance SAN (Storage Area Network) component with various connectivity options. During 2001, Yankee Group, an industry research group, expressed their view that over the next several years market adoption will increasingly focus on converged storage systems, those which combine the best elements of NAS and SAN topologies.

 

The Company has focused its development efforts on building converged storage product offerings. By integrating our Virtual Storage Architecture into integrated NAS and SAN hardware platforms we will achieve an extremely high level of flexibility and functionality for our customer base. Our storage platforms entail a diverse set of interconnectivity options including OC12 and OC48 (Optical Carrier) which yields a position in Storage Wide Area Networking (SWAN). Although the telecommunications industry was in turmoil over the last

 

4


Table of Contents

few years, the Internet and optical backbones are stronger than ever. With increased demand for streamlining the efficiency of corporate wide area networks as well as an increase in metro optical area build outs, we believe that our product and market positioning associated with SWAN is positioned for not only addressing near term customer needs, but for the future.

 

Product Line

 

CyberBorg:

 

The CyberBorg is an advanced information storage and delivery system capable of simultaneously delivering large blocks of information, including digital images and financial data in record time. It has scalability to over 100 Terabytes and sustained data rates of 450MB per second. It can be integrated into existing networks and servers and adapted for either direct attached, SAN or NAS. The system’s flexibility results in significant savings in cost and time by eliminating the need to invest in totally new networks and storage architectures.

 

CyberNAS:

 

The CyberNAS is a Network Attached Storage appliance, which is targeted to mid to large corporations. The product combines a disk storage subsystem, RAID implementation and file server all in one. The file system supports Microsoft Windows environment (CIFS), Unix (NFS) and AppleShare. The CyberNAS also has a diverse set of connectivity options including Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet (wire speed) and OC12/48 (optical carrier).

 

CyberFibre:

 

The CyberFibre is a SAN ready storage system with truly large systems (18TeraBytes+) of optimized storage management power on a single controller and is configurable up to 120 disk drives per loop pair. With multiple host connections, its flexibility and scalability to adapt to expanding storage needs, the CyberFibre supports dynamic addition of disk capacity to existing RAID sets.

 

Customers and Applications

 

The Company has a worldwide customer list. Products based upon the Virtual Storage Architecture have been sold to customers across a broad range of industries including banking and financial services, education, technology, telecommunications, military/aerospace, general services, government, and manufacturing. It is our goal to continue to market to existing customers to leverage our multiple product offerings and to continue to expand our customer base for high-performance storage solutions.

 

Customer Service And Support

 

We offer our customers a full array of customizable support options and programs. Customers have the option to decide how they want their service and support structured, so that the maintenance of the customer’s data storage equipment fits into the customer’s business model. Our technical services organization comprises a group of skilled support personnel, located at our corporate headquarters in Nashua, New Hampshire and in field locations in the United States.

 

In addition to our own support engineers and technicians, our strategic service alliances with third-party service providers enable us to offer comprehensive, high-quality programs to support customers on a worldwide basis. Our strategic service alliances are formed with third-party providers that are some of the most respected organizations in the service industry. All in-house and third-party service technicians supporting our customers are trained by our personnel, and service parts are generally stocked in local service offices. Service technicians are backed by a technical support hotline staffed by support analysts at our facilities. Our personnel always take

 

5


Table of Contents

the initial service call, determine the logistics of the support plan, and manage the process. Onsite services may be tailored to customer requirements in terms of hours covered, response times and onsite hardware service providers.

 

Competition

 

The information storage market is extremely competitive. Companies such as EMC Corporation, IBM Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, NCR Corporation, Storage Technology, Sun Microsystems, and more than 100 other public and private companies provide disk arrays for a wide variety of computer systems, workstations and PCs. A number of these large organizations have had difficulty maintaining profitable quarters over the past year. Storage industry analysts attribute some of this to the larger corporations inability to quickly react to increasing pressure from smaller, more cost and performance competitive companies. Although we are currently unaware of any other vendor offering identical product offerings, we cannot assure you that we will be able to compete successfully against existing companies or future entrants to the marketplace. While we believe that the price-performance characteristics of our products are currently competitive, increased competition including the introduction of new products by our competitors, could result in price reductions, reduced gross margin and loss of market share, any of which could materially adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition. Many of our current and potential competitors have significantly greater financial, technical, marketing and other resources than us. As a result, they may be able to respond more quickly to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements, or to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products than us. In addition, current and potential competitors have established or may establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties. Accordingly, it is possible that new competitors or alliances among competitors may emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share.

 

Licensing

 

During 2001 and 2002, we entered into three agreements concerning the licensing of our intellectual property. In December 2001, we entered into an agreement with XIOTech Corporation and its parent company, Seagate Technology, Inc. under which we granted to XIOTech a fully paid up, non-exclusive license in one of our patents in return for a one-time royalty payment of $2,500,000. At the same time we also entered into a royalty free cross license agreement with XIOTech covering all of XIOTech’s and the Company’s respective patents. In October 2002, we entered into an agreement with Hitachi, Ltd. pursuant to which we granted to Hitachi a fully paid up, non-exclusive license to use our patents and to sell Hitachi products that may be subject to a claim in any of our patents. In return for the license grant, Hitachi has agreed not to oppose an appeal we have filed in the Court of Appeal in London. Hitachi may be required to pay us royalties for the license contingent upon the outcome of our appeal. See Item 3 – Legal Proceedings. In addition, in November 2002, we entered into a licensing agreement with EMC Benelux BV under which we granted to EMC Benelux BV and its affiliates a fully paid up, non-exclusive license to use our patents to make, use, lease and sell any EMC Benelux BV and its affiliates products that may be subject to a claim in any of our patents. In return for this license grant, EMC Benelux BV paid us a one-time royalty payment of $3,000,000. Although we are continuing to pursue additional license arrangements where appropriate, there can be no assurances that we will be able to secure additional license fees, during the coming 12 months. Any failure to secure additional licensing revenue would have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations.

 

Sales and Marketing

 

Domestic.    Our products are sold domestically through a combination of direct sales personnel, value-added resellers and other distributors. Our direct sales organization coordinates the activities of our resellers and distributors and seeks to actively participate with them in selling efforts in order to enable us to establish strong direct ties with our customers and end users.

 

International.    We have established several different operational methods in order to develop international markets. While we have temporarily closed the operations of our European sales organizations, in 2003 we plan to use distributors and value-added resellers to penetrate certain international markets and maximize returns on our marketing and sales efforts.

 

6


Table of Contents

 

The remaining international markets served by us are coordinated and supported from the United States through the use of our independent distributor network. Our distributors are responsible for penetrating and developing their respective markets, providing support and maintenance services and maintaining an inventory of spare parts. The distributors are also responsible for establishing relationships with value-added resellers, who sell our products to final end users.

 

For the year ended December 31, 2001, product sales of $1,350,000 to one customer, World Domination, Inc. were in excess of 10% of revenue. In addition, license fees received from EMC Benelux BV during the year ended December 31, 2002 and from XIOTech Corporation during the year ended December 31, 2001, each represented in excess of 10% of total consolidated revenues in those years.

 

Revenues by geographic area are summarized as follows:

 

         

United States


  

Europe


  

Total


2002

  

Revenues

                    
    

Products and services

  

$

1,842,273

  

$

529,837

  

$

2,372,110

    

License fees

  

 

3,000,000

         

 

3,000,000

         

  

  

         

$

4,842,273

  

$

529,837

  

$

5,372,110

         

  

  

2001

  

Revenues

                    
    

Products and services

  

$

5,310,011

  

$

1,237,616

  

$

6,547,627

    

License fees

  

 

2,500,000

         

 

2,500,000

         

  

  

         

$

7,810,011

  

$

1,237,616

  

$

9,047,627

         

  

  

2000

  

Revenues

                    
    

Products and services

  

$

5,038,677

  

$

1,466,951

  

$

6,505,628

    

License fees

                    
         

  

  

         

$

5,038,677

  

$

1,466,951

  

$

6,505,628

         

  

  

 

Manufacturing

 

Our manufacturing operations, which are located in Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S.A., undertake procurement of materials, product assembly, product assurance, quality control and final testing. Our manufacturing strategy has been to develop close relationships with our suppliers and subcontractors and to exchange critical information, in order to minimize capital investment and overhead expenditures and to control inventories.

 

We rely upon a limited number of suppliers of several key components utilized in the assembly of our products. We purchase best of class subsystem components and enclosures from a number of major suppliers. Our reliance on our suppliers involves certain risks, including a potential inability to obtain an adequate supply of required components, price increases, timely delivery and component quality. This risk is particularly significant with respect to suppliers of system processors and disk drives because in order to meet product performance requirements, we must obtain components with extremely high quality, performance and data storage capacity. In addition, there is currently a significant market demand for disk drives and for semiconductor memory components, which could result in component shortages, selective supply allocations and increased prices of such components. Although to date we have been able to purchase our requirements of such components, we cannot assure you that we will be able to obtain our full requirements of such components in the future or that prices of such components will not increase. In addition, we cannot assure you that problems with respect to yield and quality of such components and timeliness of deliveries will not occur. Disruption or termination of the supply of these components could delay shipments of our products and could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition.

 

7


Table of Contents

 

Research and Development

 

Since our inception, we have made substantial investments in research and development. We believe that our future performance will depend in large part on our ability to maintain and enhance our current products, develop new products that achieve market acceptance, maintain technological competitiveness and meet an expanding range of customer requirements. Our future growth depends substantially upon the success of our current product line and related products as well as new products that may be developed; however, we cannot assure you that our products will attain broad market acceptance. Due to the complexity of the engineering effort required to produce new data storage subsystem products, the development and commercial exploitation of new products are subject to significant technical risks. We cannot assure you that new products will be introduced on a timely basis or at all. If new products are delayed or do not achieve market acceptance, our business, operating results and financial condition will be materially adversely affected. In addition, we cannot assure you that customers will not defer orders in anticipation of new product introductions by our competitors or us.

 

Our product may contain undetected software errors or failures when first introduced or as new versions are released. We cannot assure you that, despite testing by us and by current and potential customers, errors will not be found in new products until after commencement of commercial shipments, resulting in loss of or delay in market acceptance, which could have a material adverse effect upon our business, operating results and financial condition.

 

Our total expenses for research and development for fiscal years 2002, 2001 and 2000 were $2,759,000, $4,335,000 and $1,496,000, respectively. Research and development efforts in 2003 are expected to be at a lower level than prior years and are expected to be focused on increasing the individual capabilities and performance of existing products and developing new value added software and hardware products to provide our installed base with greater functionality, as well as to attempt to expand that installed base.

 

Proprietary Rights

 

Our policy is to protect our technology by, among other things, filing patent applications with respect to technology considered important to the development of our business. We have been awarded certain U.S. patents and have additional U.S. patent applications pending. Foreign counterparts of certain of these applications have been filed or may be filed at the appropriate time. We decide on a case-by-case basis whether and in what countries we will file foreign counterparts of a U.S. patent application.

 

We believe that our products, trademarks and service marks do not infringe on the proprietary rights of third parties. We cannot assure you, however, third parties will not assert infringement claims against us in the future. If such a claim is made, we will evaluate the claim as it relates to its products and, if appropriate, may seek a license to use the protected technology. We cannot assure you that we would be able to obtain a license to use any such protected technology or that any such license could be obtained on terms that would not have a material adverse effect on us. If we, or our suppliers, are unable to license any such protected technology, we could be prohibited from incorporating or marketing such products. We could also incur substantial costs to redesign our products or to defend any legal action taken against them. In the event our products are found to infringe protected technology, we could be required to pay damages to the infringed party or be enjoined from manufacturing and selling such products.

 

We require all employees, and technical and other consultants and advisors to execute confidentiality agreements upon the commencement of employment or consulting relationships with us. These agreements generally provide that all confidential information developed or made known to the individual during the course of the individual’s relationship with us is to be kept confidential and not disclosed to third parties except in specific circumstances. All of our key technical employees have also entered into agreements providing for the assignment of rights to inventions made by them while in our employment. Although we continue to take protective measures to protect our proprietary technology, we cannot assure you that these measures will be successful. In addition, the laws of certain foreign countries may not protect our rights to the same extent as U.S. law.

 

8


Table of Contents

 

We believe that there are products being sold that infringe our patents and we intend to vigorously enforce our intellectual patent property rights. We will be seeking royalties for the past infringement, in addition to licensing agreements for the future production and sale of such infringing products. See Item 3—Legal Proceedings.

 

Employees

 

As of December 31, 2002, we had 22 full time employees. Of the total, 20 were based in North America, and 2 in the United Kingdom and Western Europe. Our ability to develop, manufacture and market our products and to establish and maintain a competitive position in our industry will depend, in large part, upon our ability to attract and retain qualified technical, marketing and managerial personnel, of which there can be no assurance. We consider our relations with our employees to be good. None of our employees are covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

 

ITEM 2.    PROPERTIES

 

We currently lease from an affiliate a 35,000 sq. ft. facility that is occupied by our light manufacturing, research and development and administrative operations in Nashua, New Hampshire. In 2002, we paid annual rental of $304,655 to lease this facility. In December 2000, we executed a five-year operating lease for these facilities, which provides for annual adjustments to the monthly rental payment based upon the previous year’s consumer price index. The lease has a five year renewal option, exercisable at our election, and does not provide us with a purchase option for the property. The current monthly rental is $25,388, which we believe was comparable to rentals of similar properties in the area and indicative of the fair market rental that could be obtained from an unrelated third party in an arm’s-length transaction, as of the date we entered into such lease. See Item 13—Certain Relationships and Related Transactions. We believe that all our properties and premises are adequately protected by insurance coverage. We believe that our existing facilities are adequate for our current needs and that additional space will be available as needed.

 

ITEM 3.    LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

 

In December 2001, Marketlink Technologies, LLC filed a civil action against the Company in the Circuit Court for Oakland County, Michigan, alleging that the Company owed them a $156,000 termination payment under the terms of a manufacturers representative agreement that the Company terminated for cause in April 2001 because of Marketlink’s inability to sell the Company’s products and perform the services required by the agreement. In January 2002, the Company filed counterclaims against Marketlink in this matter, including a claim for breach of contract. The Company believes that Marketlink’s claims are without merit and denies all allegations. Further, the Company intends to vigorously defend this action. The discovery phase has recently been concluded and a trial date has been scheduled in August 2003. We are unable to predict any outcome concerning this matter, but we do not believe that costs and expenses associated with defending this claim will have a material effect on our business, operating results or financial condition.

 

During March 2001 we filed legal actions against Hitachi Data Systems Limited in the United Kingdom for infringement of two of the European patents in our intellectual property portfolio. Hitachi filed a counterclaim against the Company alleging that these two patents were invalid. The trial was completed in July 2002 and in August 2002 the Judge ruled that neither of our patents was shown to be valid in the United Kingdom or infringed by Hitachi. On October 17, 2002, the judgment for the defendant, Hitachi, on their counterclaim was entered and our European Patent (UK) 0,294,287 (‘287) and European Patent (UK) 0,539,494 were revoked. The Order for the revocation of the ‘287 Patent was stayed pending appeal and we were granted permission to appeal the judgment so far as it concerns the ‘287 Patent. It was also ordered by consent of the parties that there be no order as to costs. On October 31, 2002 we filed an appeal with the Court of Appeal seeking that the judgment with respect to the ‘287 Patent be set aside and that the Court of Appeal find that the claims of the ‘287 Patent

 

9


Table of Contents

are valid, that Hitachi infringes the claims of the patent and that there be a certificate of contested validity in respect of the claims of the ‘287 Patent. The Court of Appeal is scheduled to hear our appeal on June 24, 2003.

 

During October 2002, we entered into a Settlement Agreement and License with Hitachi under which Hitachi agrees not to oppose our appeal of the judgment discussed above and not to seek recovery of litigation costs. In return, we granted Hitachi a non-exclusive, fully paid up, perpetual license to sell or distribute products that may be subject to claims of our patents. In addition, Hitachi may be required to pay us license fees contingent upon the results of our appeal. If the appeal as to validity of our patent is successful, a license fee of $1 million dollars will be due under the agreement with Hitachi. Further, if the appeal as to infringement is successful, an additional license fee of $1.4 million dollars will be due under the agreement with Hitachi.

 

In October 2001, we filed a patent infringement action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas against Veritas Software Corporation and Veritas Software Global Corporation alleging that certain Veritas Software Corporation storage products infringe Storage Computer’s intellectual property patent number U.S. 5,893,919 entitled “Apparatus and Method for Storing Data with Selectable Data Protection Using Mirroring and Selectable Parity Inhibition.” In February 2002, we filed an additional patent infringement action in the United States District Court of the Northern District of Texas, against Veritas Software Corporation and Veritas Software Global Corporation alleging that certain Veritas Software Corporation storage products infringe Storage Computer’s intellectual property, specifically U.S. 5,257,367 entitled “Data Storage system with Asynchronous Host Operating System Communication Link”. However, we amended our complaint to dismiss claims arising under this patent in September 2002. In March 2002, we filed a third patent infringement action against Veritas Software Corporation and Veritas Software Global Corporation alleging certain Veritas Software Corporation storage products infringe Storage Computer’s intellectual property patent number U.S. 6,098,128 entitled “Universal Storage Management System.” Our claim is for injunctive relief, damages and legal costs arising from the alleged infringement.

 

These actions were referred to a court appointed mediator with an initial mediation date in April 2002 and such mediation has continued to the present time without any mutually agreeable basis for settlement having been reached. A trial date has been set in September 2003.

 

On September 23, 2002, Veritas asserted a counter claim for patent infringement with respect to patent number U.S. 5,812,753 entitled “ Methods for Initializing or Reconstructing Data Consistency Within an Array of Storage Elements.” We believe that this claim is without merit and intend to vigorously defend this action. No trial date has been set for this matter.

 

ITEM 4.    SUBMISSION OF MATTERS TO A VOTE OF SECURITY HOLDERS

 

No matter was submitted to a vote of the Company’s security holders during the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2002.

 

10


Table of Contents

PART II

 

ITEM 5.   MARKET FOR REGISTRANTS COMMON EQUITY AND RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS

 

Our Common Stock is traded on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol “SOS”.

 

The following table sets forth the range of the high and low sales prices for our Common Stock for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2002 and 2001, as reported by the American Stock Exchange.

 

FISCAL 2002

  

High


  

Low


First Quarter

  

7.95

  

5.10

Second Quarter

  

6.49

  

3.00

Third Quarter

  

4.09

  

.21

Fourth Quarter

  

.42

  

.17

FISCAL 2001

  

High


  

Low


First Quarter

  

10.70

  

6.25

Second Quarter

  

10.31

  

4.72

Third Quarter

  

7.60

  

3.40

Fourth Quarter

  

9.65

  

3.70

 

On March 28, 2003, there were 395 record holders of our Common Stock. We believe the actual number of beneficial owners of the Common Stock is in excess of 5,000 holders because many of the shares of our Common Stock are held in custodial or nominee accounts for the benefit of persons other than the record holder.

 

We have never paid any cash dividends on our common stock and do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future on our common stock. We are also restricted from paying cash dividends under the terms of our Series A and C Preferred Stock.

 

During the first quarter of our fiscal year 2003, our common stock traded at prices ranging from a low sales price of $.22 to a high sales price of $.70.

 

On May 3, 2002, we completed a $3,000,000 financing through a private placement of common stock to a group of four European and US based institutional investors. The Company sold 600,000 shares of common stock at $5.00 per share and issued 260,000 warrants to purchase common stock at $6.18 per share that are exercisable over a five-year period. The sale was a private placement to accredited investors and was exempt from the registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, pursuant to Section 4(2) thereof.

 

11


Table of Contents

 

ITEM 6.    SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA

 

The following data, insofar as it relates to the three fiscal years 2000 through 2002 has been derived from the consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere herein, including the Consolidated Balance Sheets as of December 31, 2002 and December 31, 2001, and the related Consolidated Statements of Operations for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2002, and notes thereto. The data, insofar as it relates to the Balance Sheet Data as of December 31, 2000, December 31, 1999 and December 31, 1998, and the Statements of Operations Data for the fiscal years 1999 and 1998, has been derived from our historical financial statements for such periods.

 

    

Year ended December 31


 
    

2002


    

2001


    

2000


    

1999


    

1998


 
    

(in thousands, except for per share data)

 

Statement of Operations Data

                                            

Revenues:

                                            

Products and services

  

$

2,372

 

  

$

6,548

 

  

$

6,506

 

  

$

10,526

 

  

$

17,052

 

License fees

  

 

3,000

 

  

 

2,500

 

  

 

0

 

  

 

0

 

  

 

0

 

    


  


  


  


  


Total revenues

  

 

5,372

 

  

 

9,048

 

  

 

6,506

 

  

 

10,526

 

  

 

17,052

 

    


  


  


  


  


Costs and expenses:

                                   <