OSRM's patent study

Posted Aug 5, 2004 7:05 UTC (Thu) by Xman (guest, #10620)
Parent article: OSRM's patent study

$150,000/year for $5 million in coverage... That suggests a chance of being sued in any given year of 1 in 50 (maybe 1 in 100 if you have a massive margin). It also assumes that such a suit will cost you >= $5 million to take care of (if the average cost was only $2.5 million it'd be just 1 in 25 odds). That seems more than a little bit pessimistic if you ask me. I would love to see how their actuarials came up with those numbers. Think about how many companies use Linux, and for how many years. Think of how many of those companies have been the target of patent suits involving the Linux kernel. Okay, now make a buying decision. ;-)

OSRM's patent study

Posted Aug 5, 2004 8:37 UTC (Thu) by pkolloch (subscriber, #21709) [Link]

Well, I am no insurance expert at all. Yet, I think the main idea her is to pool money from different customers to defend the same patent violations. Thus there are synergies and you cannot directly convert this into the assumed probabilities.

OSRM's patent study

Posted Aug 5, 2004 16:02 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

OSRM expects to make money on the coverage. It also has expenses like employing attorneys and buying reinsurance. So, your financial analysis is simplistic.

This initial policy is just that - the first one. We are building up a risk analysis process that today is only valid for the kernel, and we don't have lawsuit history to go on right now although we know one can happen.

The companies that will buy this policy are the ones interested in putting the attorney team together.

Bruce