What is the cost of this lawsuit to Laminar Research?
I have done some research on this, and I am told that it will cost me about $1,500,000 (one and a half MILLION dollars) to defend this suit.
I am also told that it should take about two to three years to defend.
This is more money than I have made selling Android Apps in the first place.
Under theses conditions, does it make sense for me to be in business?
Does it make sense for me to make a cool little App like X-Plane for Android and release it?
Does it make sense for me to do business in the United Sates, where frivolous lawsuits (unlike in other nations) go un-punished?
Uniloc demands in it’s suit that I pay them “on-going, post-judgement royalty”, though I promise that they have never written a single line X-Plane source code.
They have written NONE of X-Plane, yet they claim that I owe them “on-going, post-judgement royalty”.
What ELSE could I do with $1,500,000 and 3 years?
Recent projects that have cost me similar time and money have been the Meyer/Finlay Pet adoption center (which is getting hundreds, and soon thousands, of animals from the pound adopted) and development of the Vertical Power VP-400 (which is a display for real airplanes that shows the pilot how he can glide to a safe landing after the engine quits).
Future projects I hope to undertake include a high-efficiency rotary engine prototype for experimental aircraft use, an endowment scholarship to my high school, and another pet adoption center.
Which of the projects above shall I shelve to pay my defense fees instead?
How much TIME is being taken away from improving X-Plane to spend on this lawsuit? How many features and improvements will X-Plane NOT get because of this?
What impact is the STRESS of this lawsuit going to have on me? How will that translate into development of X-Plane for my customers?
Myself and my wife have a single daughter, and would like a second child, but my wife will not get pregnant while under the threat of losing everything we have to a lawsuit from a company that has contributed nothing to us.
Google “effects of stress on the mother on the health of the unborn child” to see why my wife is right. Or just click here.
Is this going to cost me a second child? I KNOW that sounds ridiculous to you, but my wife and I are about 40, the lawsuit should be expected to drag on about 3 years, and my wife will NOT get pregnant when under this kind of stress, due to it’s impact on her unborn child. (And she is right to make this choice). Would we be wise to HAVE a child in 3 years, with my wife moving into her 40’s? It may sound ridiculous to write this, but my wife surely told me, crying, that she cannot have a child while under this pressure, due to the physiological impact that it would have on her child.
As I look at this lawsuit and it’s fall-out, and the huge number of lawsuits like this that are filed each year, with a cost to defend them that equals the cost of September 11 every three months, I cannot help but say the same thing to myself over and over and over: “If ONLY people KNEW!”