Drew is exaggeration. I took on Acacia, it cost me nothing more than the travel, and time away from my primary business.
Lawyers cost a lot of money, but for something like "the ability to rotate a mobile screen" that rackspace is fighting you don't need a lawyer.
Prior art exists for rotating screens on desktops and tablet PCs. Feature parity on Mobile is not innovative. Obviousness is the challenge to a patent and the defense against its infringement.
This is not a "risky" case. It is not a case that requires 4 lawyers for a year. It is a case for 1 guy part time for a year. Which if he is $400k a year could be $75k but it doesn't need to be that.
I believe the keyword here is "average". There are probably examples of cases on both ends of the spectrum: cases that dragged on to be very expensive and others that were resolved with a phone call or letter.
Yes a billion dollar fight would skew the average a lot. Several fights between porn companies and streaming media changed the numbers as they were in the hundreds of millions range at that seriously messed with the average. The typical need not be so high.
Lawyers cost a lot of money, but for something like "the ability to rotate a mobile screen" that rackspace is fighting you don't need a lawyer.
Prior art exists for rotating screens on desktops and tablet PCs. Feature parity on Mobile is not innovative. Obviousness is the challenge to a patent and the defense against its infringement.
This is not a "risky" case. It is not a case that requires 4 lawyers for a year. It is a case for 1 guy part time for a year. Which if he is $400k a year could be $75k but it doesn't need to be that.