Electronic Commerce

A Chicago-based investment firm pledged $100 million yesterday to AppNet Systems Inc., a young Bethesda company that has visions of becoming dominant in the exploding electronic commerce industry."

Joseph Galli Jr. is on a mission: to make VerticalNet Inc., the company he now heads, as much a household name as Amazon.com Inc., the company he left. If he can do that, the former executive of Towson-based Black & Decker Corp. might realize another goal, helping put the East Coast on the map for technology. Galli tried to spread the word about VerticalNet and e-commerce lessons learned at Amazon while speaking yesterday to about 200 Baltimore brokers, consultants, bankers, accountants and Internet business people at Maryvale Preparatory School.

Suppose you bought a computer program that crashed and trashed your system -- and the only place you could sue for damages was in Ireland. Suppose a software giant sued you because you posted unkind comments on the Internet about a program that didn't work. Or suppose the family photos you posted on the Web turned up in a big company's advertising campaign -- and you learned the company had the right to your image simply because you used one of its programs to edit the photos. You already may have agreed to terms like these when you broke the plastic seal on a software package or clicked an "I accept" button on a program you downloaded from the Internet.

New technology laws will hurt consumers, won't attract business The Sun seems to have uncritically bought the governor's claim that Maryland has taken a leadership role in digital commerce by passing a number of computer related laws. It asserted in the subheading of a recent article that new laws will "promote technology" and in the article that Maryland will be a "national leader in electronic commerce" ("Glendening signs bills on e-commerce," April 26). Maryland has become a leader, all right.

A half-dozen major U.S. companies announced yesterday that they will work with a Washington attorney for Baltimore-based Piper & Marbury LLP to increase consumer confidence worldwide in shopping on the Internet.The companies, America Online Inc., Dell Computers Inc., International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp., Time Warner Inc. and Visa U.S.A. Inc., want to establish a "predictable and stable" legal environment worldwide to ease international transactions on the World Wide Web, said Ron Plesser, the Piper attorney who will coordinate the group's efforts.

AppNet Inc. reported yesterday that its third-quarter revenue was up 67.6 percent over last year and announced that it planned to sell 4 million additional shares of common stock.The Bethesda electronic commerce company had revenue of $30.1 million in the quarter, which ended Sept. 30. In the third quarter of last year, the company took in $18 million.AppNet had a quarterly net loss of $21.3 million, or 68 cents per diluted share. Last year, the company's third-quarter loss was $20.7 million, or $1.09 per share.

Perhaps to the surprise of one gender and not the other, female entrepreneurs are more actively adopting new technology for business growth than their male counterparts, according to a newly released study.Among the study's most significant findings is that "the share of women business owners that have established a home page for their business has tripled since last year -- 23 percent now have a home page, compared to 16 percent for men," according to Lois Haber, chairwoman of the National Foundation for Women Business Owners.

AppNet Systems Inc., a Bethesda company that is less than 2 years old but hopes to emerge a dominant player in the exploding electronic commerce industry, went public yesterday, raising $72 million.The company sold 6 million shares, or a 20 percent stake, at $12 each. The shares closed unchanged on the Nasdaq stock market, reflecting the recent cooling trend for Internet-related issues.The company, which helps companies set up and maintain computer systems that allow them to conduct business over the Internet, said in its filing for the initial public offering that it posted a $15 million loss on revenue of $17 million in 1998.

Maryland could be the first state in the nation to set up courts for settling legal disputes over high-technology business issues under legislation pending before the General Assembly. House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr., the bill's chief sponsor, says a specialized court is needed because of the growing role that electronic commerce is playing in Maryland's economy and because the issues involved are increasingly technical and complex. "We've got to come up with the judicial expertise to judiciously manage this new world of e-commerce we're coming into," the Allegany County Democrat said.

In just a few years' time, Ken Bajaj made a fortune helping companies, small and large, shift from outdated mainframe computer systems to the "client-server" systems that are ubiquitous today in American industry.So successful was Bethesda-based I-Net Inc., the company Bajaj and his wife founded to aid government agencies and companies with their computer system design needs, that it was bought two years ago this month by computer-services giant Wang Laboratories Inc. for $167 million.Now Bajaj, a former electrical engineering professor who also worked for Texas billionaire Ross Perot, hopes to replicate that stunning success with AppNet Systems Inc., his new Bethesda-based venture, which he's aimed to ride what he calls the "next paradigm shift" for business: The Internet.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening signed a wide-ranging package of technology-promoting bills into law yesterday, then jetted off to Silicon Valley to boast that they will make Maryland a national leader in electronic commerce. The governor's visit to Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., today is the first stop on a weeklong trip that will take him to three states to promote initiatives the state launched or expanded during the General Assembly session that ended this month. For Glendening, already basking in national attention over passage of his gun safety legislation, the trip will further raise his profile as he prepares to take over the chairmanship of the National Governors' Association in July.

WASHINGTON -- In a smart move -- taken none too soon -- the Commerce Department recently announced that it would begin following the impact of electronic commerce on the broader economy. We will start surveying tens of thousands of manufacturers over the next few months, asking how much they acquire and sell over the Internet, said Commerce Secretary Bill Daley. A recent study by GartnerGroup estimates that business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce will skyrocket from about $145 billion in 1999 to $7.3 trillion in 2004, accounting for seven percent of all sales transactions around the world.

Suppose you bought a computer program that crashed and trashed your system -- and the only place you could sue for damages was in Ireland. Suppose a software giant sued you because you posted unkind comments on the Internet about a program that didn't work. Or suppose the family photos you posted on the Web turned up in a big company's advertising campaign -- and you learned the company had the right to your image simply because you used one of its programs to edit the photos. You already may have agreed to terms like these when you broke the plastic seal on a software package or clicked an "I accept" button on a program you downloaded from the Internet.

Maryland could be the first state in the nation to set up courts for settling legal disputes over high-technology business issues under legislation pending before the General Assembly. House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr., the bill's chief sponsor, says a specialized court is needed because of the growing role that electronic commerce is playing in Maryland's economy and because the issues involved are increasingly technical and complex. "We've got to come up with the judicial expertise to judiciously manage this new world of e-commerce we're coming into," the Allegany County Democrat said.

In a bid to make Maryland a mecca for electronic commerce, Gov. Parris N. Glendening and legislative leaders have agreed to push an ambitious package of bills aimed at creating the friendliest legal environment in the nation for doing business over the Internet. The "Technology Agenda" to be unveiled today at an Annapolis news conference would promote high-technology businesses in the state while updating existing laws to deal with legal problems spawned by the cyber-revolution -- issues such as computer piracy, invasion of privacy and distribution of child pornography over the Internet.

By everyday standards, the leasing of eight digital copiers is hardly worth noting.But years from now, the execution of the small deal yesterday between Advance Business Systems Inc. and Hodes, Ulman, Pessin & Katz in Towson may well stand as a milestone in the development of electronic commerce.That's because the Cock- eysville office equipment company and the Towson law firm struck their deal without paper and with help from eOriginal Inc., a 3-year-old Baltimore company with a patented process that allows users to create, sign, transfer and retrieve documents electronically.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Checkfree Corp. shares rose as much as 27 percent yesterday as investors chased shares of the electronic commerce company, a maker of software for doing business on the Internet.Shares of the Columbus-based company, priced at $18, closed up $3.50, at $21.50, on trading of 5.6 million shares, making it the fourth-most-active issue on the Nasdaq market and seventh overall."Everyday you hear something new about the 'Net," said Iang Jeon, a money and technology analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

AppNet Systems Inc., a Bethesda electronic commerce service provider, said yesterday that it had bought Kodiak Group of Pittsfield, Mass.Kodiak Group employs 50; AppNet employs 550.Terms were not disclosed. Both companies are privately held."The acquisition of the Kodiak Group represents a key component of AppNet's long-term strategy for delivering comprehensive e-commerce services under one roof," said Ken S. Bajaj, chief executive and co-founder of AppNet, in a written statement.Kodiak's services include providing secure routing for electronic commerce transactions.

TECHNOLOGY is big business for Maryland. Jobs in this industry now number 225,000, mostly in the Baltimore-Washington region. The state's tech companies exceed 6,500, with an $11 billion payroll.The B-W corridor stands No. 2 in the United States in information technology firms and No. 3 in biotechnology. A new survey ranks Baltimore and Rockville Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, for high-tech job growth in the mid-Atlantic.No wonder more than 12,000 people are expected to visit the state's Technology Showcase at the Baltimore Convention Center today and tomorrow.

AppNet Inc. reported yesterday that its third-quarter revenue was up 67.6 percent over last year and announced that it planned to sell 4 million additional shares of common stock.The Bethesda electronic commerce company had revenue of $30.1 million in the quarter, which ended Sept. 30. In the third quarter of last year, the company took in $18 million.AppNet had a quarterly net loss of $21.3 million, or 68 cents per diluted share. Last year, the company's third-quarter loss was $20.7 million, or $1.09 per share.