What a year for ClearOne Communications (Pink Sheets: CLRO), starting with the January bombshell that the Securities and Exchange Commission had filed a complaint against the firm and two of its executive officers. The allegations? Simply that during an 18-month period the firm, its CEO/President and CFO had "engaged in a program of inflating the company's revenues, net income and accounts receivable by engaging in improper revenue recognition." Just some of the negative events that hit CLRO during the year included its delisting by Nasdaq, the loss of its auditor, Ernst & Young (who also withdrew its favorable support for ClearOne's 2001 and 2002 annual reports), the termination of the executives allegedly responsible for the channel-stuffing, a several-month trading halt in its stock and getting slapped with a class action shareholder lawsuit. As of today, CLRO has apparently settled its SEC and shareholder lawsuits, pending court approval in early 2004. No official word yet on the status of the outstanding SEC complaints against the former CLRO executives.

2. NPS Pharmaceuticals Sets Merger, Then Calls It Off.

Take one of Utah's largest life science companies, NPS Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: NPSP), throw it into a $1.6 billion "merger of equals" with Enzon Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ENZN) that takes Wall Street by surprise and leads to a 37 percent erosion in NPS valuation, and you've got the makings for calling off a wedding. Today NPSP is trading at more than $30 per share and has nearly a dozen drug candidates in development, with two on track for possible marketing clearance from the FDA in the next 12 months. The company also had nearly $350 million on hand as of the end of its most recent quarter (ended Sept. 30). In my opinion, NPS is definitely better off today on its own versus being part of a merged company.

1. SCO, SCO, SCO.

How can one company make so many people so mad they can't see straight? It's easy. Tell 'em that their baby (the Linux operating system) is ugly and that it's not really their baby.

Not that the SCO Group has said Linux is ugly, simply that IBM (NYSE: IBM) and others have misappropriated UNIX software code into Linux over the years and are therefore violating SCO intellectual property rights. Which (if it's true) means a lot of companies owe SCO money, and in some cases, it's a lot of money.

SCO's stock has gone from a low of $1.09 per share back in mid-February to a high this year of more than $22 per share in mid-October. In the meantime, SCO has sued IBM for a now $3 billion for contract violations, been sued by Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT), gotten into a number of legal rumblings with Novell, threatened to sue major Linux users, raised $50 million in a private placement, and generated its first annual profit ever.

Not only has SCO thrust itself to the front of the technology news line in Utah, it has also entered onto the international stage in a very big way as its claim strikes at the very core of the Open Source and Linux adherents everywhere, making SCO the No. 1 technology news story in Utah in 2003.

Best wishes to all "Utah Tech Watch" readers for a very happy and prosperous 2004.

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David Politis leads Politis Communications, a public relations, investor relations and marketing communications agency specializing in the high-tech and life science markets.

E-mail: dpolitis@politis.com.