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Well... your own essay suggested that the motivation in Yahoo v Xfire was personal. If someone comes to YC with an idea you like but is incumbered by a technol
by bayareaguy 19y ago
Well... your own essay suggested that the motivation in Yahoo v Xfire was personal.
If someone comes to YC with an idea you like but is incumbered by a technology and/or business model that you know infringes on specific patents held by a company like Microsoft, do you just fund them anyways and tell them it doesn't matter?
Are you saying it would have made no difference to Yahoo if Microsoft somehow patented the continuation-server idea Viaweb depends on before you did?
- pg 19y agoYes, we completely ignore patent questions in funding decisions. So do most software investors. And yes, it would have made no difference to Yahoo. As far as I know, they didn't do any patent searches prior to acquiring us. In fact, I've never heard of patents torpedoing an acquisition. Acquirers (rightly) have a fatalistic attitude to patents. Curiously enough, Yahoo did get sued by a patent troll over Viaweb. It was after my time, but it was something to do with shopping carts. A totally bogus claim, but I believe Yahoo settled, because they were able to pay them out of the money they'd held in escrow for us. (We were not that unhappy though, because the money held in escrow had increased something like 15x.)