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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

obsoleting oneself - the mark of the hacker ethos? :)

No, the "bad news" is not him humble-bragging about obsoleting himself. It's the fact that he doesn't have the opportunity to establish precedents with wins in court because he's out of cases and the trolls won't let it go to court.

"establish precedents with wins in court "

That's great for him personally. It won't help newegg sell any more product or make it a better company. If I was a stockholder in that company that wouldn't fly with me. It's similar (but not the same) as an ad agency doing a campaign to win an aware for their personal glory as opposed to what is best for the client.

Edit: By "sell any more product" I mean in a meaningful way. Newegg has thousands of customers. The amount that even knows about this and the amount that care isn't significant enough to move the needle. You can always make a case that doing something will increase sales or have a benefit. Would you spend money on advertising in significant dollars without analysis or oversight of the benefits?

As Cheng points out, by fighting these trolls, they make themselves a more frightening target for future infringement lawsuits, so to some extent you have to find a way to take that into account. You're spending more now, but you'll save in the long run.

This logic doesn't make sense.

If a kid is bullied in school, is it "more efficient" for him to give in to the bullies and just hand over his lunch money every day? Or should he take a stand over days and weeks, and then never be bothered by bullies again? Which kid grows up to be "better" at life?

I think what Newegg is doing WILL lead to bigger long-term profits in reduced license fees, reduced legal fees when the bullies stop suing them, and increased ability to compete while their competitors are restrained by restrictive licenses and license fees.

"If a kid is bullied in school, is it "more efficient" for him to give in to the bullies and just hand over his lunch money every day? Or should he take a stand over days and weeks, and then never be bothered by bullies again?"

I think that depends on the circumstances. In some cases it might be more efficient to not get the shit beat out of you (that is if there aren't other ways to deal with it at the institutional level).

By take a stand you are assuming that the person being bullied can actually stand up to the bully and make him go away.

Fighting back often all it takes, making bully pay that is.. you do not need to win every fight you just need to make people think twice about messing with you, there are always easier victims to play with.

Clearly Cheng and Newegg can pass that test.

Real life doesn't always work out like Enders Game.

The benefit for the company is they don't have to pay. He is a legal representative of the company who has lead a winning strategy of vigourously defending against patent lawsuits instead of by default paying a licensing fee.

Since some of the fees are between 2-12 million from the article this has real impact on the bottomline of the company.

Overall the strategy seems to have a direct monetary benefit for the company. now the question can be asked if the amount of money they are saving in licenses make up for the legal fees. apparently through these actions overall patent litigators are declining to pursue newegg for these licensing fees and going after easier targets.

So fighting a lawsuit that threatened to cost them money "forever" vs. whatever it cost to fight and win "now," that would not fly with you?

Could you invest in my company please? I like to spend money all the time.

I don't think this comment deserves to be downvoted (it's currently grey, this isn't reddit).

It's entirely a valid point to be likewise concerned if newegg investors have their fiduciary interests served by an expensive fight against injustice. This is a more general concern of tragedy of the commons where it's not in any one retailer's selfish interest to battle it out, but it's in their collective interest to solve the systemic problem.

Newegg might be heroic here in the grand scheme of things, but not necessarily for its shareholders.

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