Slashdot Mirror
Tech Companies Swimming In Lawsuits
conq writes "A new survey shows that the tech industry places third after healthcare and energy companies in the number of lawsuits it deals with. It states that an average tech company faces 42 lawsuits currently, more than the insurance industry!" From the article: "An average U.S. technology company currently faces 42 lawsuits vs. 37 lawsuit for an average company. The tech industry places third, after healthcare and energy companies, in the number of lawsuits it deals with ... Needless to say, that's quite expensive. Nearly a third of these companies spend more than 2% of their gross revenue on legal expenses, according to one of the largest surveys of corporate counsel in America."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9645594/
Yes, I do realize the source is from M$NBC...
Just on the personal level, I'm involved in a small startup venture. We have three people working here, 2 developers, 1 lawyer, and we also retain an outside counsel as well. We're not facing any lawsuits, and hopefully will never face one. When doing contract work, I'd say we spend more of our time dealing with the client's legal department than with the actual technical specification. Its utterly disgusting.
I have no problem believing this.
I run Technical Video Rental, and I've had - literally - dozens of legal threats over the simple fact that I buy DVDs, then rent them out. Despite the fact that this is deeply settled case law, I've gotten everything from a legal cease-and-desist from one firm's CEO (who has a degree from Harvard Law School and was formerly Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources) to a threat to - ahem - anally rape me (from a guy who think's he's anonymous, because he doesn't know what website logs and IP addrs are).
I spend about $2,000 - $3,000 per month on attorney fees trying to explain to people what the First Sale Doctrine is.
This is money that could be spent growing the business, and delivering more interesting videos to my customers...but it gets squandered because so many folks (a) don't understand what the copyright law says; (b) don't understand that exposure increases sales (see also: MP3s and the RIAA).
Bah.
It'd be nice to spend more time doing business, instead of doing meta-business (lawsuits).
Well, statistically, the better choice would be to give the average and the standard of deviation.
Giving the median would be a bad idea, as in your example, the median is 0. But we know darn well that we shouldn't report that sort of information, it's perhaps even more misleading and alarming than 17 per company.
Reporting that the average is 17, but that the standard deviation is 537.033803405335 (an extremely highly high value) would work in the sense that it would be accurate, but wouldn't work in the case that most people wouldn't know or understand what the hell that meant.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
"Tech Companies Swimming in Lawsuits!!!"
turns out to be a survey taken by Fulbright & Jaworski Lawfirm.
I bet they just felt horrible when they figured this out. "Time to stop litigating, we've become TOO successful."
The fact that it was written by a bunch of lawers explains why Olga had such a hard time blogging it.
The fact that her blog made it into slashdot is still a mystery.