It would be fine if the Wang family members wanted to continue using the name Wang An.

After all, this is a real person's name, not a pure trademark, you can also play the edge ball.

As long as the logo and ui design are different from the registered "Wang An" display, it will not be confused. If you want to use those two words, it is still allowed according to US law.

However, Wang An’s new software company cannot be used in terms of truth or reason, which is infringement. Most of your company’s equity has been sold to Gu Ao, how can you eat it all in one go?

This requires talking about money or ceding a few shares.

In the final game between the two sides, Wang An proposed a relatively straightforward condition: "I am willing to take out 5% of the current 21% equity of the head office and transfer it to you in exchange for the establishment of a new pure software company in the future, and continue to use the Wang An and WPS brand in the sub-field of office software.

Of course, I can guarantee that in the future, this new software company that still has the word Wang An's name will never go beyond the line to operate any hardware products. If my descendants want to operate electronic hardware after I die, then I will not let them use my name. They will start a new company again. Of course, I believe they will not want to operate a hardware business anymore."

The current 5% of the company's shares seem to be quite a lot of money. After all, Gu Ao has acquired more than 60% of the shares before, and he spent a total of 1.2 billion US dollars openly and secretly.

Then this 5% is equivalent to 100 million US dollars. The current value does not consider future value-added.

But considering that Wang'an's company does not have the latest competitive products at present, and its scientific research strength has been emptied by Gu Ao, its greatest value is the brand, so it is not an exaggeration to pay out 100 million US dollars in profits.

Gu Ao thought for a while: "6%. Now everything is stable. I will collect 70% of the shares and absolutely control it. You leave 15%. If you spend more than 1%, I will allow you to poach the backbone of software technology who once developed wps from the current company, and you can authorize all the previous wps software rights to you for sharing.

As for other small shareholders who hold a total of 15% of the shares, I will give them some cash compensation and I will not share the shares."

Wang An withdraws some brand equity rights from the current company, which theoretically divides the interests of the entire company. Therefore, the theoretical beneficiaries of this part of the interests include not only Gu Ao, but also other small shareholders of the company.

However, all the other small shareholders combined have less than a quarter of Gu Ao's voice. So Gu Ao helped them make a decision and gave others cash compensation.

Gu Ao accepted all the shares worth 100 million US dollars transferred by Wang An, and then this part should have been divided into about five equal parts, Gu Ao occupied four parts and other minority shareholders accounted for one.

In actual operation, it is equivalent to Gu Ao's one-time cash dividend of US$20 million to all other minor shareholders. (Dips based on the transfer of the company's intangible assets, the profits obtained)

The entanglement with the Wang family was completely resolved, and the Wang family left the market from then on.

...

The day after Wang An returned to recuperate, Gu Ao finally took time to lead a project meeting for all the technical and project leaders of Wang An Computer.

From a global perspective, plan the research and development progress of the new generation of personal computers.

In fact, since the privatization process was completed, some preparations for the project establishment stage have been done.

Even earlier, Tiankun Company relied on the technical backbone who was poached from Wang An over the past year, cooperated with the Tiankun Group's experience in making game console systems, and the rich accumulation of using Motorola 68000 series CPUs, and also carried out many argumentative attempts.

The company has a very Chinese-style slogan "Fight for 300 days and win the new generation". All R&D engineers are required to work overtime, and of course the treatment is very high.

The backbone engineers do not want to work overtime or cause labor-management disputes. As long as it is not very difficult and must use American work, they can move to China and outsource it to Tiankun’s R&D headquarters in Qiantang. The Chinese in 1987 were very happy to work overtime on the premise of getting an extra high salary.

Everyone has a clear idea: within 300 days, combined with Wang An's legacy and Tiankun's application experience in Motorola CPUs, they can come up with a personal computer that can dominate the needs of the new generation of users.

The most minimal goal at present is to fully surpass the Apple Macintosh II (Mac-ii) computer that is also planned to be launched next year, that is, in 1988.

If Wang An was in full swing back then, Wang An himself was energetic and had a sharp vision, so this could naturally be done.

However, because of Wang An's aging and the incompetence of handing over managers in the past two years, he left a lot of homework, which led to the fact that Wang An's computer research and development power had already lagged behind Apple before Gu Ao took over. Therefore, this task seemed a little difficult and needed to be achieved very hard.

After all, according to the original historical trajectory, Wang'an Company has not successfully launched any next-generation computers since then. Although Wang'an's total stock price in 1987 was higher than Apple, it was provided by the brand, not by technology.

Before the project meeting, Gu Ao first summoned Shulhoff, who had been transferred from Tiankun to coordinate, and John Chambers, who had temporarily accepted the title of acting president at Wang'an Computer.

Before John Chambers left Wang An and defected to Gu Ao, he had the title of CMO. After returning this time, Gu Ao wanted to appoint a confidant and reward the first legitimate, so that Chambers would be promoted to a higher level.

However, Gu Ao did not intend to let him get the title of CEO too easily, so the current title of money is still coo, who is in charge of daily work, including this new product project.

Gu Ao also made it clear that the agency's inspection period is one year. As long as the project is completed well and the product will be fully exaggerated to Apple's Macintosh II after it is launched next year, then Chambers can be a CEO.

As for Shurhof, he has always been the president of Tiankun, and of course he will not come to Wang An to serve.

The reason why Gu Ao asked Shurhof to come to Wang An temporarily for comprehensive coordination was that Wang An had not cooperated with Motorola enough, and he had accumulated too little experience in using Motorola CPUs and other chips.

Since Tiankun started to make the first-generation game console in 1983, he has been using Motorola's 68000 series CPUs, so with Shurhof's coordination, Wang An's R&D department can fully and quickly connect.

In general, it is the hardware cooperation, driver writing and optimization of new computers, which mainly relies on Tiankun's R&D strength.

Wang'an's old R&D team is responsible for other development work besides drivers and soft and hard interfaces.

The division of labor is clear, and it is promoted in parallel, and it is organized.

Even Gu Ao himself sighed that he is really a master who is good at making full use of resources, optimizing and integrating resources, and achieving strong alliances.

Even if he doesn't write a line of code himself, just his far-sighted vision in the strategic resource allocation of the project can be considered a leader among the bosses of the technology company of the same era.

...

"Boss, our preliminary preparations have been completed very smoothly. At present, all the components required for the hardware have been selected and the circuit design has been initially integrated. Motorola and other suppliers have also integrated all the required data interface instruction sets to us.

Therefore, in the next eight months, we can focus on the development of the operating system and application software level, among which the workload of hardware drivers will be greatly reduced, and there is only some optimization workload, and the time should be completely time-consuming."

Shurhof's report really made Gu Ao very worried. It seems that Tiankun's responsible driving and optimization will not have any problems.

In the next eight months, the main energy will be spent on focusing on the operating system kernel and application-level software.

Gu Ao nodded, praised Schulhoff for a while, then turned to John Chambers:

"Then the back, it's up to you Wang An's old general, John, don't let me down. I want to see that you still have a sense of honor and can compete with the people I brought from Tiankun to make progress and quality."

"Boss, we will do it, don't worry." Chambers patted his chest and made a note.

Gu Ao said: "Tomorrow we will discuss the layout requirements of the first-party application software, so as to point out some directions for the optimization and adjustment of hardware. Their current hardware design will not change, but the performance indicators may still be fine-tuned and improved in the same series.

As a new generation of personal computers, the selection of hardware parameters cannot be completely followed by the speed of suppliers such as Motorola. The most important thing is to look at the software application scenarios. We must make new and epoch-making software run perfectly."

Gu Ao's words made Chambers feel terrified and he quickly wrote it down.

Chambers vaguely felt that Boss Gu's idea was similar to that of Jobs next door. Jobs was also a tyrant with functional design. Every time he set the hardware indicators based on "I want to make sure that what function runs perfectly and smoothly."

If an engineer told Jobs that this is impossible to do now, or that there is no cost-effectiveness, he would be scolded by Jobs, and even slapped the table and said, "Then don't produce this next generation of products first, wait. Wait. When this problem is solved one day, or technological progress can achieve this, we will release new products. Now this kind of hot chicken is not as stunning as ever. Why do you want to launch it? Squeeze toothpaste?"

Only the developers of closed-system computers can do this. Microsoft's open operating system cannot do this. They don't care about hardware replacement. Anyway, they are making compatible machines.

Chambers understood Gu Ao's attitude, sorted out his needs, and then left to prepare for tomorrow's meeting.

Shurhof watched the Wang An executives retreat, and asked Gu Ao a little unwillingly: "Boss, you spent 1.2 billion US dollars and finally got such a stall. I always feel... I gave them too much. The Wang An brand is important and valuable, but this empty shell..."

Gu Ao raised his hand and stopped Shurhof's unwillingness: "This question is not something you should consider, but since you have been following me for so many years, I will say a few more words to you.

If it were three or four years ago, facing the competition from the first generation of Apple's Macintosh, Wang An's signature is indeed not worth that much money. But now, we are facing not only the second generation of Macintosh, but also Microsoft.

You started out as a gaming console, have never been exposed to computers, nor have you ever been exposed to ‘open operating systems’, and you don’t understand how important it is to ‘induce third-party software developers to join your ecosystem’.

Wang An’s signature not only means channels and customers, but also gives third-party developers confidence.”
Chapter completed!