Doesn't that just mean more money though? I'd agree that the analysis of the damages would get pretty fuzzy at best if you're trying to account for such factors, but it's still ultimately just a loss of money.
Here's another example -- Imagine how different things could be today if the AT&T lawsuits hadn't temporarily paralyzed the BSDs just as Linux was also emerging.
I can't even begin to quantify the cost of what could have happened if the lawsuit hadn't been filed by AT&T.
This stalled BSD development/adoption for 2 years while the legal status was in question.