Quote Originally Posted by Mike Henderson View Post
I understand your position, Fred, but I'm not as pessimistic about a company being unable to press its case in court. LN is not without resources and there are ways to share the cost of litigation by giving up part of the recovery*.

The point I'm trying to make here is that Woodcraft did what any other business would do in deciding to enter the business - they followed the law. I understand that what they did might have a negative impact on LN (and others), but that's the way capitalism and free markets work. Schumpeter's "creative destruction" is often very painful but provides the dynamic growth that makes our country what it is.

Mike

*When I was with Rockwell Semiconductor, an individual (not another company) sued us for infringing his patent. We didn't think he had a case and went to trial. He won $52M. Maybe we didn't do a good job in court, but we had a LOT more assets than he did. We probably could have settled prior to trial for a tenth of that.
Mike,

Thank you as if nothing else this has been a very interesting conversation and I will apologize to the vast majority whom I have probably bored out of their gourd and the rest that probably see me as a whacko.

Mike, I am no expert on economics by any stretch of the imagination but I do think that perhaps Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction" is a little bit different than you stated and not truly applicably to this discussion. What I vaguely remembered and then looked up it seems that he was speaking more toward "Creative Destruction" as a force that entrepreneurs with their new and innovative companies, tools,, etc.gradually destroy the value of companies that have a monopoly or near monopoly.

So, the Wood River planes are neither new or innovative and LN certainly does not enjoy any type of monopoly. In the paragraph above I paraphrase a portion of "Creative Destruction" in Wikipedia but I also found many other pieces written specifically about this in the many books written by Schumpeter as well as about him and his economic theories. Amazon is wonderful for allowing access to pages in books without having to but them all.

So, all in all I think we are going to have to agree to disagree. Though quite politely. Mike, I know that the wealthier/deep pocketed/larger, etc. do not ALWAYS win court cases but you must admit that it is true the vast majority of the time.

Thank you again as it was very interesting.

Fred