It didn't have to cause any harm; Zazzle did not have to react the way it did.
Yeah, maybe their lawyers advised Zazzle "not to risk it" and take down all the pi products. That is what lawyers are paid to do, but that doesn't make it the right business decision.
Lawsuit are not the only risk; by acting so foolishly, Zazzle pissed off a bunch of customers and generated a ton of bad press for themselves.
The point isn't that the lawsuit is going to ruin the company. It's that the lawsuit is going to cost the company money in almost every case where it happens, no matter how frivolous the lawsuit. The smart choice for the company is to limit risk factors for having to face a lawsuit.
Yes. I understand that lawyers in a big corporation have a big responsibility to minimize liability because it measures in the billions. In this case they totally failed to take into account the direct damage this will do to their brand perception. If the press decides to pursue this, it's going to hurt them badly.
The copying invalidates the claim that the original device was harmful.
It was safe enough that they decided to literally copy it. Unless they can provide contemporaneous evidence that they felt there was a specific aspect of it that was harmful.
At this point it seems like the only reason they said it was harmful was to avoid franchisees from using it, which would quite clearly qualify as defamation.
Well, threatened with legal action and wasn't up for fighting it. It didn't get as far as him being sued, and while I can't blame him in the slightest for that choice, I would have been absolutely fascinated if it did go to court. A compatible reimplementation of something that's being sold to emergency services being slapped down because it's compatible sounds like the sort of thing useful precedent could have come out of.
You're right in that the origins of the case are pretty stupid. And yet what the big Z did was pretty flagrantly illegal, which is how they got the 65m to begin with. And then he (apparently) did more illegal stuff.
So you're right, one lesson to be learned is 'don't hire some schmoe to build your revolutionary product'.
The other lesson to be learned is 'doing flagrantly illegal things with revolutionary products will get you sued for millions of dollars or worse'.
> What would they sue them for? Not adequately meeting requirements of niche markets?
These people would lose their very lucrative business. They'd let their lawyers figure out something to sue for, but the decision to find some way to sue would be based on the prospect of losing sales, not on knowing what legal wrong they had suffered.
Remember SCO? They kept up that lawsuit for about a decade. Good lawyers can find some reason to sue.
But I mean, you see what’s wrong here right? The lawyers thought about it from the angle of who’s actually responsible, but realized that suing that company probably wouldn’t accomplish much lasting change. So they made up reasons to also sue popular tech companies, in hopes that embarrassing them will help serve the lawyers’ goals. That’s not how the process is supposed to work.
Yeah, maybe their lawyers advised Zazzle "not to risk it" and take down all the pi products. That is what lawyers are paid to do, but that doesn't make it the right business decision.
Lawsuit are not the only risk; by acting so foolishly, Zazzle pissed off a bunch of customers and generated a ton of bad press for themselves.
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