Battle of the Pop Ups and round one.....

[Hooper]

Let me pose this theoretically... and I know something about this, because we recently wasted nearly 30k on damages experts, economists and lawyers when we planned to file a wave of suits against the manufacturers and purveryors of ad stoppers and popup blockers.

If you sell a popup blocker or ad blocker, is that any different than launching an ad on somebody elses site? My answer would be an absolute no. They are identical.

The advertiser/software manufacturer made money by taking away your money/eyeball/console/next click, right? Right.

What happened there was a violation of copyright law. They modified/added to your work as a whole, for profit, without your permission. Each violation carries a maximum penalty of $35,000USD. That is a maximum and INCLUDES punitive damages. And you must show ACTUAL damages to get that money.

Now, how do you show ACTUAL damages with something like this? You show that you went out of business because of them (or something close). But if these new popup ads launch and your revenue is steady or growing, or if it is declining but there are other explanations you're fucked and have no way of proving that this copyright violation actually did any damage, and accordingly have no way of proving that they owe you anything.

Now think like a scummey acacia. umm. err. .lawyer. It will cost you more than $35,000USD PER CASE to prosecute each producer of adware... and if you sue more than one, they can use the fact that you are pointing multiple fingers to even further prove that you dont know what actual damages they caused.

Basically here's the way it was explained to me. If these ads put you out of business and AFTER you're out of biz you can prove it. Then they might owe you a maximum of $35k.

It sucks, but it's no different in legal terms than wendys opening up across from mcdonalds and putting up big signs designed with no purpose but to take away their customers. Yeah, there are other little parts that it could potentially interfere with, potential contracts, existing contracts, but in that case you have to show conspiracy... in the end it's just sucks but it's part of biz i guess

JMHO