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Comment by taligent | Hacker News Reader

Sure. If you naively assume that lost sales/revenue is just for the iPhone device itself.

But every lost sale of an iPhone is also one less person within the ecosystem. An ecosystem that plays off each of its elements to drive revenue e.g. iPhone user buys movies which they can only watch if they buy an AppleTV etc. It's borderline impossible to quantify all of the indirect revenue Apple would lose not just now but in the future.

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How is it borderline impossible?

There's a technique pretty much every company that knows what's it doing applies to figure out exactly what you mentioned and it's called downstream impact analysis.

I'm absolutely 100% certain if you're an executive at Apple and you ask your finance department what the downstream impact is of an iPhone sale the finance department will come back with numbers for the profit variance when the customer wasn't already a customer, when they already were and a bunch of other scenarios.

In the words of the court, "The Court finds that the full extent of these losses would likely be unascertainable, difficult to calculate, and irreparable."

And I fully agree that the finance department would be able to calculate the expected profit per customer for today's products. But what about tomorrow's ? And the next year ?

Apple locks in the user at multiple points: apps, movies, TV shows, books, accessories etc.

You're using circular logic. "The court finds theory of irreparable harm to be plausible because the court finds that the full extent of these losses would be irreparable."

OP's entire argument is that the court's finding is incorrect and that's why its a victory for Apple's lawyers -- I think you're severely underestimating the forecasting techniques used, especially in a company as competent as Apple.

The OP did not address this argument, but merely asserted that no irreparable harm would be done because you could simply pay damages. The court has said that calculating damages is impossible.

It doesn't seem to me that incalculable implies irreparable but it's certainly a defensible position.

I'm absolutely 100% certain that the analysis you speak of is an educated guess at best.

I think it is very easy to imagine irreparable harm being done.

There is no such "technique". They can make educated guesses, but that's about it.

If the RIAA can sue Limewire for more than the GDP of this entire planet[1] for damages from file sharing, surely Apple can sue Samsung for downstream damages within their ecosystem.

[1]http://www.pcworld.com/article/223431/riaa_thinks_limewire_o...

Following from that logic, what about the harm that Apple is doing to the Android ecosystem by preventing the sale of these phones when they are supposed to be sold? If Apple can't prove what it claims, then what of the phones that are not sold in the meantime? Is that equivalent to the value of the bond? Where does that money go? Disclaimer: I am in no way a lawyer, but I think my familiarity with law is about the same as the familiarity of the judge with technology.

Samsung derived the bond amount which did seem awfully low at $96 million.

How many Galaxy Nexus devices do ou think Samsung is likely to sell? It's older hardware.

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