-----Original message-----
From: Christopher Svanefalk <christopher.svanefalk(a)gmail.com>
Sent: Wed 01-08-2012 10:48
Subject: Re: criminal use of linux
To: Community support for Fedora users <users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org>;
> Best,
>
> Christopher Svanefalk
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 5:13 PM, Jack Craig <jack.craig.aptos(a)gmail.com
> <mailto:jack.craig.aptos@gmail.com> > wrote:
> Typical M$ thinking, and within recent history, SCO!!
>
> Thing did not go very well for SCO in the end.
>
> Why is this not being brought into a courtroom, rather than companies just
> paying licenses?
It is frequently the case that even a successful defense against a patent lawsuit costs more than licensing a bogus patent.
Furthermore, there is a non-zero probability of losing said lawsuit, with costs that would significantly exceed the costs of a license.
So if w is the cost of a license
p is the probability of losing a lawsuit
z is the probability of a lawsuit even being filed
x is the cost of defending the lawsuit and winning
and y is the cost of defending the lawsuit and losing
if
w < z(py + (1-p)x)
w < z(p(y-x) + x)
Then it makes sense to just settle. Some firms may make a more conservative estimation of p than others. Some firms believe that y and x are quite close, and much larger than w - which means the probability of winning or losing doesn't really matter. Some firms assume z is 1 - a lawsuit is inevitable.