Playboy (PLA) is a fascinating stock. As with every trade, there are two sides to the story. One side will argue that the stock has bounced nicely off the 52-week low of $2.30, and that it has room to run as the concern continues to alter its model for making money. At some point, the bull might say, the market will become excited and buy the shares.

Interesting thesis. My argument against speculating with this idea is simple: it's Playboy. You might do well; you might not. I don't know how much plainer it can be.

4Kids Entertainment (NYSE: KDE), a producer of children's content that engages distribution and licensing opportunities, has not been a great stock idea. Although shares of the company have perked up as of late, the longer-term trend hasn't been so encouraging. Let's see if the first-quarter numbers might change your mind.

Well, I don't know about your mind, but my mind so far hasn't been changed. Revenues declined by 32%. There was a net loss of 15 cents per diluted share. Now, granted, that was far better than the net loss last year, which calculated out to 48 cents per diluted share. I give the company credit for narrowing the loss, but something tells me that I don't necessarily want to invest hard-earned money in a business that is based on the fickle nature of a very young target audience.

I knew Disney (NYSE: DIS) was an awesome licensor of its content. Still, I was pretty happy when I read the following Hollywood Reporter piece about the Mouse and its success at growing retail sales of its merchandise. Disney is looking at revenues of $30 billion at retail channels based on products bearing its logo and characters to be booked by the end of its current fiscal year. That would represent a magical double-digit growth rate of 12% if the figure is reached.

Merchandise sales based on characters and intellectual properties owned by companies such as Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), which licenses heroes such as Batman, and Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Nickelodeon, which has had great success with SpongeBob SquarePants, don't compare.

The article rightfully reminds readers that the total amount generated in retail sales is only an indication of how seemingly popular a company's brands are in the marketplace. It does not point to the amount of revenues or profit a company books on the sales (Disney will only receive a small percentage of those sales, perhaps between 5% and 15%).

The important thing I take away from this as a shareholder is that Disney is doing a reasonably good job of milking its franchises. As one might expect, the usual suspects were cited as drivers: Hannah Montana, High School Musical, the Jonas Brothers music project, and Disney Princesses are doing the heavy lifting for Disney's consumer-products division, along with a property that continues to surprise me: Cars. Amazing that the latter remains a popular seller in the boys category.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) promised to invest $100 million in business ventures with Chinese software companies and it looks like the fruits of that investment are paying off. Microsoft announced new licensing agreements on three mobile phone technologies to two Chinese companies. The software involved was developed at Microsoft's Beijing research lab and developed at its facilities in China.

Microsoft licensed mobile picture-viewing and video compression technologies to Comtech, which designs cell phones, telecommunications equipment and consumer gear for both Chinese and multinational electronics makers. The other Chinese company benefiting from Microsoft's investment in China is Talkweb, which is getting licensed access to technology that people can use to upload photos to their website and create cartoons of themselves. These cartoons can then be sent to family and friends using a phone or other multimedia messaging service.

These are only the first of many deals Microsoft hopes to make in China. This licensing strategy was used successfully in Europe and the U.S. to create start-ups built around Microsoft technologies. Microsoft licenses to existing and new companies that decide to commercialize a product Microsoft does not want to take to market itself, a win-win situation.