Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 57

SundaySpccial Personal technology 3E Personal finance 5E Mutual funds 6E SUNDAY, MAY 31, 1998 Digital Edition aaamammmammmmBm www.DemocratandChronicle.com USINESS DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE Race is on to cash in on Viagra THE ASSOCIATED PRESS mm When shareholders and companies do battle, it's often the lawyers who win Sunday Debriefing News worth talking about Work cut out Business is so good for Rochester's tooling and machining industry that it hurts. A quarterly survey in March indicated that the average machine shop worker is putting in eight hours of overtime each week. The average company employs 54 people and has four openings for skilled workers. It spent $303,600 in 1997 and $146,000 in the first quarter of 1998 to buy machinery. Douglas Seward, executive director of the Rochester Tooling and Machining Association, said the association will survey the local industry every three months.

Class actions The law firms typically keep a quarter to a third of the damages they win. For stockholders, class actions are an important force in lawyer who defends companies in stockholder suits, said many lawsuits are filed on the "knee-jerk claim" that if the news is bad, somebody must have done BY STAFF WRITER PHIL EBERSOLE Detection Systems Inc. announced the bad news on a By Thursday, a stockholder had filed a lawsuit keeping corporate officers something wrong. Stockholder lawsuits honest, said Andrew charging that the company's earlier optimistic statements were INSIDE: CORPORATIONS FIGHTING BACK, 2E are almost always class actions lawsuits on behalf of all stockholders who bought stock in a certain time period or fall within a certain Friedman, a Washing' ton, D.C., lawyer who specializes in stockholder rights cases. The Securities and Exchange Commission can't monitor every company, so it's up to lawyers to 1 1 Three of the better known stockholder lawsuits here: Eight officers and directors of RCSB Inc.

who profited from illegal insider trading three years ago have agreed to pay $550,000 to stockholders. A ninth member of the ring is in jail. Public advertisements will be published soon telling stockholders how to collect. Bausch Lomb Inc. has agreed to pay $42 million to some 18,000 stockholders and their lawyers to settle a lawsuit accusing of faking sales by forcing distributors to stock up on unsold inventory.

A hearing on the proposed settlement is scheduled for July 16. Six different lawsuits have been filed against Detection Systems Inc. accusing the security alarm company of sitting on bad news while it issued new stock and executives sold their own stock. A class action lawsuit is category. There would be hardly any stockholder lawsuits if act as "private attorneys general," he said.

But Richard Ziegler, a New York City 1 SUITS, page 2E Within the next three months, the company was hit with six lawsuits in all, involving 22 plaintiffs and 10 law firms. Their aim is to start a class-action lawsuit against Detection Systems. It would be a lawsuit not just for themselves, but for hundreds and possibly thousands of other stockholders who might not even know the case has been filed. Hundreds of stockholder class actions are filed each year. Stockholder rights is a well-established and lucrative legal specialty.

IT hot spots Just one law firm, Berger Montague of Philadelphia, pending in federal courts in Florida against Danka Business Systems Pic, which is accused of misleading stock which represents plaintiffs against Detection Systems, Bausch Lomb Inc. and Danka Business Systems holders with overly optimistic statements about taking over distribution and sales of Eastman Kodak Co. copiers. Pic, claims to have recovered $1 billion for clients over the years. Another firm the Detection Systems case, Mil- berg Weiss Bershad Hynes Lerach of New York City, claims to mi mm have recovered $2 7 VA TRENTON, N.J.- Entrepreneurs peddling audiotapes, herbal remedies, even sunglasses, are trying to make the most of the flimsiest links to Viagra to make a buck off the impotence pill craze.

Las Vegas-based BluB-locker Corp. says its "BluB-locker Viagra" shades help mask the blue tinge Viagra adds to some users' vision. "This is crass commercialism," conceded BluBlocker chairman Joseph Sugarman. "I just couldn't resist the opportunity to tie in with that product." While some companies might be reaching a little far to take advantage of Viagra, others say they're merely acknowledging a link consumers have already made. Some companies are clearly flouting trademark laws, and Pfizer Inc.

is fighting back. "We expect that there will be copycats or attempts at coattail marketing," said Andy McCormick, spokesman for Viagra's maker, Pfizer. "When they step over the line in terms of the law, we will step in." That's already happened in three cases, Nels Lippert, an attorney for Pfizer, said. Blublocker chairman Sugarman says he'll probably give away the 200 pairs already made, after Pfizer attorneys threatened a lawsuit "that kind of dampened our enthusiasm" Two other companies have run afoul of Pfizer attorneys since Viagra was approved for sale on March 27. Both sell herbal supplements over the Internet and were promoting sexual potency products with extremely similar names: Vae-gra and Viagro.

"They've capitulated," after Pfizer filed trademark infringement suits, Lippert said. Other Viagra-related ventures aren't blocked by trademark laws, though. At least three books on Viagra and impotence treatment are on the market, including one by New York internist Dr. Steven Lamm, The Virility Solution. Some herbal supplement makers are promoting products with names such as Nu-Man and Stamina as natural alternatives to the Pfizer medication.

Cars lose nationality and become the sum of their parts GANNETT NEWS SERVICE EVE TAHMINCIOGLU WILMINGTON, Del. Eugene Flickinger, 72, of New Castle, Del, fought against the Japanese during World War II on a Naval cruiser where he lost two close friends. Since then, he has refused to buy Japanese cars. "I buy union-made, American-made cars," he said. Otto and Lolo Heitlinger of Wilmington are both Holocaust survivors.

Otto lost 148 members of his family. "We will never be able to forget what we went through," he said. And, he has never bought a German car. For some Americans, painful memories like these have dictated their automobile buying decisions for decades. While they realize their tiny boycott will not topple giant automakers, they maintain it is a matter of prin- Three Rochester-area companies made Computer-world magazine's sixth annual list of the best places to work in information systems.

Xerox Corp. ranked No. 2 among 25 information-technology companies, scoring high marks for its number of new hires (450 in 1997) and low turnover (less than 4 percent). Frontier Corp. was No.

16 on the list, published in Computer-world's May 25 issue. Of 75 non-information technology companies, Corning Inc. was No. 3. It was cited for its low turnover rate and high compensation Video generation A warning to kids' parents: Your car's back seat is about to get even noisier.

Video-game companies this fall are rushing out a fresh wave of beeping go-anywhere gadgets that fit in shirt pockets, hoping to spark a big comeback in demand. Nintendo, adding to its $50 Game Boy line, will charge $30 more for a color-screen versioa Tiger Electronics has shrunk its already small game-player into a $50 Pocket Pro. Sony plans an even tinier game gadget, yet to be named, barely bigger than a matchbook. No fear of flying Business travelers are discovering the joys of booking their trips over the Internet. Conde Nast Traveler magazine found that 22 percent have booked travel online, and that 86 percent of that group were thrilled with the results.

One airline executive told the magazine that customers feel empowered because Web sites give them access to information about flights, fares, hotels and car rental that only travel agents have had in the past. Portrait of a shopper The typical American at a shopping mall tends to be young and makes a lot of return trips, the International Council of Shopping Centers found in a recent survey of 38,000 shoppers. The ICSC found the median age of mall shoppers is 36, seven years younger than the median age of the total U.S. population over the age of 13. The typical shopper is at a mall three times a month, and stays for one hour and 15 minutes each time.

Only about a third window shop, and those who spend money at malls are spending more of it an av- erage $66.70 per mall visit last year, up from $59.25 in 1996. Compiled from staff and wire reports. SILVA I staff artist i I -ilTi'll i lini if -r- uli IMirn V.iviWiifili ff the shoe fits, you've probably stepped in a Brannock Device being the state-of-the-art of how to measure the foot," Oren said. When it first came out, the Brannock Device caused a buzz in the shoe industry. Shoe stores used it as a principal enticement in their advertising to lure customers, emphasizing their newfound ability to properly fit shoes.

Over the years, competitors tried to mimic the Brannock Device but none found success. Another attribute of the Brannock Device is its durability. Unless someone runs over it with a truck they can last for generations. When Brannock died in 1993 at age 89, he left a company that was still master of its niche but one that had become frozen in time. At the time, Follett's fa- It's true.

Ask anyone in the shoe business and they will tell you instantly that the Brannock Device is the industry standard for measuring foot size and has been since its invention in 1926 by Charles Brannock. Before Brannock's invention, salesmen used a simple measuring stick or just kept trying different shoes until they found a pair that fit the customer. Brannock patented his measuring device in 1927. It has changed very little. "Mr.

Brannock was ahead of his time," said Phil Oren, a veteran shoe industry representative who for the last decade has been conducting shoe-fitting seminars. "What he was doing in the late 20s has taken us right through the century as far as THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LIVERPOOL It's a contraption that has had a foothold in American culture for more than 70 years and yet it could present the perfect trivia question. Heck, three years ago Tim Follett couldn't have identified the Brannock Device by name either, and he's now the company's vice president. "It's kind of interesting. Everybody knows what it is, but nobody knows what it is," said Follett, who takes a peculiar pride in producing one of America's most inconspicuous gizmos.

"In the business, everybody knows who we are. We're a lot larger in name than we are in stature," said Follett, who oversees 14 full and part-time workers. The Associated Press Perfect fit Vice President Tim Follet with versions of the Brannock Device at his factory. ther-in-law, Sal Leonardi, who owned a factory that made tools for other manufacturers, was looking to buy a company with a product line. Leonardi bought the company in November 1993 and hired his 33-year-old son-in-law two years later.

Follett has tried to bring the company into the 1990s. His challenge has been to enhance the device's marketability while making it easier and less costly to produce. And so far, no one has found a way to give Brannock Device the boot from its spot as an American archetype. CARS, PAGE 2E.