"But like you say, it'll take ten, fifteen years to get the money out of them. And it'll cost a mil in legal fees on the way. So what you do is, you create an investment syndicate. You can maybe get thirty million out of Disney, plus whatever the jury awards in punitives, and if you keep half of it, you can deliver a fifteen-x return on investment. So go find a millionaire and borrow sixteen million, and turn the defense over to him." Perry was dumbstruck. "You're joking. How can that possibly work?" "It's how patent lawsuits work! Some dickhead engineer gets a bogus patent for his doomed startup, and as they're sinking into the mud, some venture capitalist comes and buys the company up just so it can go around and threaten other companies with real businesses for violating the patent. They ask for sums just below what it would cost to get the US Patent and Trademark Office to invalidate the patent, and everyone ponies up. Venture capitalism is the major source of funding for commercial lawsuits these days." Fred laughed and clapped. "Brilliant! Perry, that's just brilliant. Are you going to do it?" Perry looked at the table, doodling in the puddles of beer with a fingertip. "I just want to get back to making stuff, you know. This is nuts. Devoting ten years of my life to suing someone?" "You don't have to do the suing. That's the point. You outsource that. You get the money; someone else does the business stuff." Hilda put her arm around his shoulders. "Give the suits something to occupy themselves with -- otherwise they get antsy and stir up trouble." Perry and Hilda laughed like it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. Fred and the others joined in, and Perry scrawled a drunken note to Tjan and Kettlewell with the info. The party broke up not long after, amid much chortling and snorting, and they staggered home. Fred gave Perry a warm handshake and treated Hilda to a lingering, sloppy hug until she pushed him off, laughing even harder. "All right then," Perry said, "home again home again." Hilda gave his groin a friendly honk and then made a dash for it, and he gave chase. # PHOTO: A Drunken Perry Gibbons Gets a How's Your Father From Ride-Bride Hilda Hammersen MADISON, WI: Say you managed to inspire some kind of "movement" of techno-utopians who built a network of amusement park rides that guide their visitors through an illustrated history of the last dotcom bubble. Say that your merry band of unwashed polyamorous info-hippies was overtaken by jackbooted thugs from one of the dinosauric media empires of yesteryear, whose legal machinations resulted in nationwide raids, beatings, gassings, and the total shutdown of your "movement." What would you do? Sue? Call a press-conference? Bail your loyal followers out of the slam? Get laid, get shitfaced, and let a bunch of students spitball bullshit ideas for fighting back?