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Presumably, the point of a patent is to 'protect' the little guy which I would argued actually doesn't.

Not that I don't agree with you, what makes Kearns' pursuit 'greedy'?




He rejected $30,000,000.

Jury awarded 1/6 after litigation.

Ford payed double to get rid of this nuisance.

$30 million in 1990 was fuck you money. It’s still enough to comfortably retire on for a high school aged person.


Don’t forget that the lawyers probably took 33-40%, after costs.


He acted as his own layer, or at least, it's what Wikipedia reports


Inflation begs to differ. That much money left liquid for 60 years at 10% inflation will be worth less than 100k of today’s money.

Edit: sorry about the non sequitur. Bitterly learning about inflation and fiat recently.


I don't know when exactly it happened but you can be 100% sure anyone complaining about fiat currency has no idea what fiat currency actually is, has something to sell you, and if you don't get out soon enough you'll be standing there listening to them misunderstand Nixon at you.


Seems like kind of a non sequitur. Who would keep the money purely liquid? GP was pretty obviously talking about if it were invested, which statistically would have beat inflation using even pretty conservative options/funds. Using the 4% rule, it would have yielded $1.2m annually in 1990 value, and adjusted up for inflation every year thereafter. That's more than $2.8m/year in today's dollar.

Not only that, but in the odd scenario where it was "kept liquid", or kept purely in cash, it'd be worth $30m in today's money, not $100k. It's not clear where the $100k figure is even coming from. Even $100k/year doesn't make sense in any context I can derive.


What? That's not how inflation works. Even left to rot in a bank account it would still be 30 mil today. Not worth as much as 30 mil in 1990 but still worth as much as 30 mil in 2024 because it is still 30 mil.


The only way I can think of it making sense is if @syklep is from a country with a currency that has inflated 10% every year with respect to the dollar for the past 60 years, and that they assumed you'd buy local currency with the $30m when you get it and now would try to sell it back for dollars.

I don't think that currency exists though. The closest current example I can think of is if you're Argentinian and you bought $30m worth of Argentinian pesos in 1992 which would be worth ~$35k today. But that is due to relatively recent hyperinflation, not yearly 10% inflation, 10 years ago it would still be worth $4.3m, 15 years ago $8.8m.

You'd have to be seriously asleep at the wheel (or being strong-armed by local law enforcement, unfortunately) to keep your liquid currency parked in a hyperinflationary currency.


10% inflation? And left liquid and earning literally nothing?

I guess if he lit the money all on fire, it would be worth nothing, too.


You should learn some more.




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