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Comment by edmccaffrey | Hacker News Reader

What an idiotic statement. A judge would look at the actual damages; launching the site for an extremely short time in a country that they are not allowed to operate in just couldn't have caused them much actual financial damage.

How much are the actual damages? Zero (what seems likely without more information) times whatever punitive multiplier you can think of isn't much at all.

I'd say they fully deserve to lose a legal battle that drains tons of money, so that MS can buy their then nearly-bankrupt company for pennies on the dollar, if they aren't smart enough to drop it when they have already benefited from the situation.

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This is an inaccurate statement of the law. Chapter 17 of the United States Code goes into voluminous detail of that actual law. Actual damages includes costs saved by the infringer. Courts can also impose punitive damages, which is not necessarily a multiplier, as well as costs and attorney's fees.

All of this assumes that US jurisdiction applies.

The infringer hasn't exactly saved any costs, now, has he?

If the infringer did not have to incur development costs, or reduced development costs, those would be saved costs and included as part of the damage award.

I will also add that the plaintiff only needs to enter the infringer's gross revenues of the entire company into evidence. It is up to the infringer to justify deductible expenses from non-infringing business in order to arrive at the profits gained from infringement.

Once again, this is assuming the US has jurisdiction.

There are damages - Plurk has a right to any money derived from copying their code, including any payments made to the evil outsourcing company and any advertising revenue (gross) that the site brought in during its short life.

That being said, suing MS can only lead to ruin. If they could keep a BS case like SCO on life support for so long, they can certainly keep this running long enough to bankrupt Plurk. I don't know about the legal system in Taiwan though - maybe they could get a judgment against Microsoft before the universe cools.

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