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'?
Not that I don't agree with you, what makes Kearns' pursuit 'greedy'?
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.
Edit: sorry about the non sequitur. Bitterly learning about inflation and fiat recently.
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.
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.
I guess if he lit the money all on fire, it would be worth nothing, too.