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You'd need enough backing to fend off a company that earned almost $40B in revenue in 2020 from an attempt to capture one of its fastest-growing revenue streams
by thr0wawayf00 4y ago
You'd need enough backing to fend off a company that earned almost $40B in revenue in 2020 from an attempt to capture one of its fastest-growing revenue streams. Good luck finding a serious investor that would be willing to try it.
- peteradio 4y agoWhat kind of legal fight would you be up against? If John Deere wanted to put up lets say 100 million to fight, what kind of money would need to be put up to defend, if its lets say 10 million or less, then maybe that's worth it if the market is 4000 million.
- thr0wawayf00 4y agoThe point of Deere defending their market would be to make it as expensive as possible for outsiders to take. There's no way they would let a billion-dollar revenue stream go for a few million. Just look at how much money was spent in the Google v Oracle lawsuit over Java APIs. Plus, if Deere won, they'd come at you for damages, which would get expensive very quickly.
- everforward 4y agoThe problem is probably in risk vs reward. You have to succeed in at least one lawsuit against John Deere (other countries may have different laws, and thus more lawsuits), and then you have to convince people to buy your third party stuff rather than OEM stuff. Then on top of that, you have to pray that John Deere doesn't successfully lobby for a law banning your software, or find a way to prevent your software working (i.e. a continual arms race). The profit is probably there, but I think the cost to get to the profit and the likelihood of failing are both too high to be appealing to investors. Those same investors could just invest in John Deere itself and probably get a better risk-weighted return.