
A lawsuit over Costco golf balls - prostoalex
https://qz.com/942785/lawsuit-over-popular-lower-priced-costco-golf-balls-shows-why-americans-cant-have-nice-things-cheap/
======
aluminussoma
Costco sued J&J Vision Care a few years ago over anti-consumer behavior in the
contact lenses industry (I characterize it as anti-consumer. The Vision Care
industry characterizes it as pro-consumer). They dropped the lawsuit in 2016,
probably because Johnson and Johnson discontinued the practice:
[https://www.law360.com/articles/800034/costco-drops-
antitrus...](https://www.law360.com/articles/800034/costco-drops-antitrust-
suit-against-j-j-over-contact-lenses)

Costco did support a different lawsuit by state of Utah against Contact Lens
Manufacturers. The Manufacturers lost their first appeal in December 2016:
[http://www.sltrib.com/news/4731439-155/contact-lens-
makers-l...](http://www.sltrib.com/news/4731439-155/contact-lens-makers-lose-
one-in)

Hopefully this will begin reducing the prices of contact lenses. Kudos to
Costco for sticking up for its customers.

Here is one manufacturer's opinion on this matter:
[https://www.alcon.com/content/unilateral-pricing-
policy](https://www.alcon.com/content/unilateral-pricing-policy)

~~~
yourapostasy
WRT prices of contact lenses, I use an ultrasonic contact lens cleaner with
plain saline (Ringer's will also work if that is cheaper in your area), then
storing the contact lenses in my lens solution to disinfect. Far better
comfort profile, for far longer, than I ever obtained following the
manufacturer instructions of 20 seconds rubbing on each side, and 5 seconds
rinsing on each side. The saline is half as much as the normal lens solution,
I use it liberally to rinse the ultrasonic cleaner, I get more use out of my
contacts, and I use far less normal lens solution. So far I haven't
encountered any drawbacks, YMMV.

~~~
electrum
Get LASIK. Having perfect eyesight and not having to deal with contacts or
glasses is worth every penny.

~~~
eps
A risk of ending up with halos is not worth it.

~~~
ada1981
If you get LASEK vs. LASIK halos aren't a problem. I had LASEK done perhaps 8
years ago, and my eyes went from 20/400 to 20/15 overnight.

The entire procedure was incredible including an HD prescription profile
generated by scanning your entire eye.

The process is $4k-$5k but with financing comes down to about the same you
spend on glasses or contacts annually.

No risk of halos as there is no "flap" cut like with LASIK, no chance it will
come loose, and more accurate vision than you could ever achieve with lenses.

The quality of life upgrade is incredible, no scratchy eyes, no falling asleep
and waking up with stinging eyes, and for sports it's incredible.

I can't explain what going from 20/400 to 20/15 is like, but basically I
walked around manhattan for 6 months feeling like I was on LSD in awe of being
able to see the mortar between bricks on the tops of buildings.

I found the best LASEK surgeon in the country and have brought in friends /
CEOs from other states and introduced them with incredible results.

If anyone wants more info, an intro, etc. let me know and I can probably get
you $500 or $1k off if you end up doing it.

~~~
kale
So I'm reading that LASEK still cuts a flap, just a thinner one than LASIK. It
also appears to have a longer healing time than LASIK[0].

It does appear to have fewer complications with the flap, since it's a thinner
one, and less chance of hazing.

[0][http://www.the-lasik-directory.com/lasik_lasek_chart.html](http://www.the-
lasik-directory.com/lasik_lasek_chart.html)

~~~
amalag
I did PRK which is the original procedure before LASIK because the thought of
a flap is too scary for me. From what I understand PRK has better long term
recovery but short term it takes more time.

People want LASIK for the convenience, almost no recovery time. With PRK I
took 1 week off work and the next week was bad too. Then more discomfort for
upto 6 months. After that it's great.

------
gthtjtkt
> Companies with deep pockets lock down the market by making it too expensive
> for competitors to operate and to offer lower-priced yet quality products.
> It is a legitimate tactic; even those who succumb to it don’t really
> begrudge the approach.

Who the hell wrote this article, the CEO of Acushnet?

"Don't get the wrong idea, small businesses love being sued over frivolous
patents they never infringed upon!"

~~~
sk5t
"Ho hum, we've been driven out of business by legal maneuvering, but it's all
in good sport."

You don't often see such a laissez-faire attitude towards one's livelihood
amongst small businesses.

~~~
sirclueless
One reason to be so nonchalant would be that the guy did in fact copy
someone's patents wholesale, and was just waiting for the day someone would
notice. If you know the lawsuit is unwinnable and not frivolous, no point
complaining about it.

~~~
annnnd
According to article this is not the case here:

> “We weren’t infringing. But we couldn’t afford to fight the case,” he says.
> Instead, his company settled the 2015 claims with Acushnet by agreeing to
> get out of the golf-ball business altogether; it received no payment from
> Acushnet, nor did it pay.

~~~
Freak_NL
That small business' response here is hard to fathom. Either the reporting is
bad, or they quietly settled for a nice sum off the record (to prevent other
businesses from getting ideas).

~~~
nulagrithom
The article makes it sound so light-hearted:

> “We laughed when we got the lawsuit. We knew we made it.”

So, what? They were just like "lol we're getting sued"? I have a hard time
believing they were perfectly OK with the situation...

~~~
quadrangle
As someone working on a non-profit startup, I regularly half-joke that our
long-term expectations are to make just enough impact that the vested
interests who prefer the status quo will take notice enough and do whatever to
make us disappear. If you start out with this awareness, you might not be
_okay_ being right about it, but maybe not totally outraged at the inevitable
injustice…

------
finaliteration
Ironically, anti-competitive moves like this are only going to accelerate the
game of golf's steady decline[0]. I get needing to protect your market as a
large player, but when you are the main player and your product is too
expensive to buy and the perception is growing that the sport you specialize
in is a waste of time and money, what good does it do to push out someone
making a cheaper product that may allow beginning players with smaller budgets
to enter the game?

[0][http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/the-death-of-
golf-201506...](http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/the-death-of-
golf-20150625)

~~~
vhold
The fact there is a high barrier of entry might be one of the only appeals
golf has at all? Playing it is a status symbol. Although, I think maybe that
elite status symbols themselves may be on a downswing, maybe because of the
growing awareness of wealth inequality?

Super rich people used to ride around in stretch limos and people found it
interesting and exciting, now there's a growing perception that's disgusting
and super rich people tend to visibly travel in much more inconspicuous
vehicles (which are taking them to their private jets).

Just a random thought..

~~~
blhack
>The fact there is a high barrier of entry might be one of the only appeals
golf has at all?

This is ridiculous. Golf is a sport that you can play from when you first
start walking, until nearly the day you die. _That 's_ the appeal.

It requires _extreme_ concentration in a way that I've never experienced in
any other sport I've ever played.

I would highly, highly recommend that people learn to play golf. I wish it
didn't have the stigma that it does with some people.

~~~
kuschku
> This is ridiculous. Golf is a sport that you can play from when you first
> start walking, until nearly the day you die.

You’ve never considered that Golf has an actual price to it, while most poorer
kids just play soccer with a single leather ball on the street, costing less
than a dollar for dozens of kids?

~~~
hkmurakami
It used to be much more affordable, and in some corners of the country (Texas,
some parts of the Northeast), it remains reasonable. The Bay Area is one of,
if not _the_ most unaffordable place to play golf in the United States.

Fred Couples (Hall of Famer) grew up in Seattle, biked to Jefferson Park Golf
Course during the summer every day with $5 in hand from his mother, played a
round of golf for $3.50 and got a burger and a coke with the remaining $1.50.

Some courses (including aforementioned Jefferson) will have free or heavily
discounted rounds for junior golfers after some cutoff time in the afternoon.

~~~
ako
$5 dollars in 1970 would be $31 in 2017. Pretty expensive for poor kids.

~~~
goldenkey
But his narrative!! Golf is the peoples' sport, didn't you know? Its free just
like Linux. As long as you can ante up your Lexus!

------
hkmurakami
This article is very sparse on details. For one, the factory that makes the
Costco balls primarily makes Taylor Made balls. The manufacturer is a Korean
company that used its excess capacity to make Costco's balls. Taylor Made
sells premium balls so they're pressuring the manufacturer to not do this in
the future.

Also i haven't seen any details about Costco having a golf ball design team.
Where did this design come from? Did they contract it out to one of the small
manufacturers that he article refers to? That's mainly the thing I want to
know, since if it's truly their design that they own, then they'll be able to
find someone to make it for them.

Also Aschunet isn't _that_ deep pocketed. Their annual revenues are $1.5B with
~$70M shares outstanding and an EPS of about 6, so about $400M in profit, and
operating income is in the range of $150M.
[https://forum.mygolfspy.com/topic/14841-acushnet-losing-
sale...](https://forum.mygolfspy.com/topic/14841-acushnet-losing-sales-
profits-market-share/)

Unlike the small ball companies they sued, Costco is a _much_ bigger company
than Acushnet and can afford to fight them off, especially since Costco has
the distribution scale, hype, and demographic fit perfectly suited to really
move the needle with this product (The upper middle class family with
disposable income that is budget conscious, which is Costco's main market, is
perfect for a budget high performance golf ball, which is a perishable
sporting good that you need to buy hundreds of if you play regularly).

(Fwiw it is _very_ common in the sport to have small upstart club makers.
Basically all you need is a milling machine to make a perfectly reasonable
iron or putter, and every now and then you'll see a random small manufacturers
club in a tour player's bag - ex: the Yes! Golf putter when Retief Goosen won
both his US Opens)

~~~
finaliteration
> Unlike the small ball companies they sued

Maybe I'm mis-reading, but I think the article said that Acushnet was the
first one to send a threatening letter claiming IP infringement.

~~~
hkmurakami
Acushnet has sued small ball companies into oblivion in the past.

Acushnet took the initiative in suing Costco this time.

Costco, unlike the small ball companies, have the funds to fight back,
Acushnet isn't _that_ big of a company. It's defeinitly a small cap company
whereas Costco is definitely a large cap.

Apologies if my post structure was not clear.

------
BEEdwards
> It is a legitimate tactic; even those who succumb to it don’t really
> begrudge the approach.

Maybe I just haven't given up yet, but what the f*ck? This is not a legitimate
tactic, this is LITERALLY everything wrong with our present system.

~~~
BoysenberryPi
She isn't wrong about it being a legitimate tactic. You might not like it, it
might make you a piece of shit for doing it, but it is a completely legitimate
tactic.

~~~
gmac
'Legitimate' is too broad. Google defines it as: 1. conforming to the law or
to rules. 2. able to be defended with logic or justification; valid.

Definition 1: maybe, although even that may be borderline, since these
unsubstantiated suits sound pretty vexatious (IANAL).

Definition 2: no way that this is justifiable, or that this peculiarly broken
aspect of the US legal system — where you pay your own costs even if you win —
can be defended with logic.

------
xupybd
This shows everything wrong with IP today. There should be no place for legal
bullying. Especially when it's as simple as crushing competitors under
litigation costs.

~~~
saidajigumi
Especially the cynical practice of filing known-baseless patent suits as
described in the article. That behavior should get the company heavily fined,
and land the responsible corporate actors in prison.

~~~
an_account
Prison seems fairly harsh. There are legitimate disagreements about what a
patent covers, and to throw someone in prison over that would be ridiculous.

~~~
xupybd
I'd agree with this. But maybe some kind of restriction on asserting patent
claims when organisations repetitively make claims that don't stand up.
Something to penalise this behaviour.

------
tedunangst
I would have appreciated some more information about these patents. Like
instead of telling me the lawsuit is all hot air, show me? I feel they
deliberately omitted any facts which might allow me to form any opinion other
than the one I'm supposed to have. (I'm happy to believe the lawsuit is
bullshit, but not based on nothing but say so.)

~~~
metaphor
The following patent numbers cited in this[1]: 6994638 8123632 8444507 9320944
8025593 8257201 7331878 6358161 7887439 7641572 7163472

[1] [http://golf-patents.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/20170317-...](http://golf-patents.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/20170317-Complaint-Costco-v-Acushnet.pdf)

~~~
tedunangst
> because, at the least, dimples on the KS golf ball do not cover more than
> 80% of the outer surface.

Haha. Do I believe that? Even the legal filing is short on facts, just
assertions. Like who counted the dimples and how many are there in reality?

Thanks for the link. I think I fall somewhere between "willing to believe what
I'm told" and "willing to do extensive research". "Willing to not particularly
care" is about right.

~~~
setr
>Like who counted the dimples and how many are there in reality?

Assuming the dimples and placement of them is uniform across the ball, and
across all manufactured balls,

Then it shouls be pretty simple to get the size of a ball, the size of a
dimple, and the spacing between two dimples, and then extrapolate the actual
coverage

~~~
gervase
Give 5 interns 5 balls each, and a black sharpie. Have them count the dimples
on each ball by putting a dot in the ones they have counted. If there were
more than 500 per ball I would be shocked - the group could be done in under
an hour.

Not sure how many you'd have to do to get a legally-valid "representative
sample", but I imagine as a supportive factor to other methods of
determination, it's not the worst option. It also has the advantage of being
dead-simple to explain.

------
sergiotapia
> David Dawsey, a golf intellectual-property expert

Talk about carving a niche for yourself.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
probably a pretty lucrative niche, too. golfers spend a FORTUNE on that game.

------
cissou
I don't understand how

"“We laughed when we got the lawsuit. We knew we made it.”"

and

"his company settled the 2015 claims with Acushnet by agreeing to get out of
the golf-ball business altogether; it received no payment from Acushnet, nor
did it pay."

are compatible statements.

~~~
exabrial
I think at some point in your life, if you're creating or performing, you'll
reach a point where your critics have a significant audience. At that point,
you can give yourself a small pat on the back, you've managed to make a splash
in the status quo.

------
bitmapbrother
Companies that knowingly waste the courts time by filing frivolous lawsuits
should be heavily punished. Acushnet is not defending their patents, they're
just trying to prevent competition. They're fully aware that no patents were
violated because they've already examined the KS balls extensively for
infringement. This case will never make it court for the simple reason that
their hand has been thoroughly exposed.

------
dbg31415
I love Costco. They pay good wages (with benefits), have good quality
products, and great prices. They have a kick ass return policy. And they stick
it to patent trolls. Fuck yeah, Costco. Keep it up.

~~~
gesman
First decent reply. Upvoted.

------
bmcusick
American courts should have a "Loser pays" rule, and stricter standards for
determining what is a frivolous lawsuit warranting additional penalties for
the filer.

American jurisprudence has always favored making sure "everyone gets their day
in Court" to the point where trolls and professional litigants are ruining
things.

~~~
hackuser
What happens if your small business sues Google? Right or wrong, you are
betting the business on that case. If you lose, Google's legal costs will
consume your entire business.

That said, it's hard for your small business to sue Google anyway.

~~~
fgonzag
I've always had an idea that whoever loses a civil suit pays the other party
the lower of the legal costs of both parties. So if small company A fights big
company B, small company A would only have to pay twice it's legal costs, even
if megacorp decides to spend smallcorp's yearly sales in the defense. If
megacorp sues a small company, then small company can decide to fight it if
they think they have a case and have enough reserves (which are easy to
estimate since they will be based on 2xs your legal costs if you lose, 0 if
you win).

~~~
terragon
That seems like a good idea and I can't come up with any obvious way in which
it can be exploited.

------
dmritard96
Samsung and Apple fought over rectangles. Nest and Honeywell fought over
circles. Next up, spheres...

But in all seriousness, this is just rent seeking via the patent system.

------
tomohawk
Reminds me of the time we almost got inexpensive milk, until some pet
congresscritters intervened to keep the milk trust intact.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/12...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/12/09/AR2006120900925.html)

------
golergka
Everybody's quick to call this "bullying". How are all of you so sure that
Costco didn't indeed steal intellectual property? Or the fact that small
companies got sued before means that it were frivolous lawsuits - because,
being small, they couldn't have possibly done anything bad like stealing IP?

I don't know anything about this issue, but at least I know I don't know it.
What I don't understand is whether all the HN commentators get the idea that
they know the situation good enough to jump to conclusions here.

------
ALee
Two things to keep in mind:

1) Acushnet is trying to keep Costco from entering the market, but once Costco
sells a significant number of its golf balls, Acushnet will have to deal with
the economic ramifications.

2) Streisand effect - this lawsuit plays really well for Costco, namely that
it gives them a lot of free publicity and hype around their supposedly amazing
golf balls.

------
duncan_bayne
Just get rid of patents altogether, already:

[http://praxeology.net/anticopyright.htm](http://praxeology.net/anticopyright.htm)

(Titled "Anti-Copyright Resources", but in fact contains a lot of material
relevant to patents, too.)

------
barking
The law is there to protect us but this is an example of how the high cost of
going to law facilitates oppression.

The same goes when it comes to dealing with the government. A government
official has no personal liability with respect to any decision they make and
has essentially bottomless pockets if it goes to court.

It means for example that a revenue officers decision is final when it comes
to the interpretation of tax law in your case, unless you're very rich.

------
Skylled
I'm sorry, but shouldn't it be the responsibility of the party making the
claim to provide evidence of patent infringement before the defendant is ever
even affected?

What a sad state of affairs our court system is in if even a known false
lawsuit can be devastating.

------
aryehof
If parties generally cannot afford to defend claims such as this, surely this
reflects poorly on access to justice. Justice only available to the rich?

How can one claim a state based on the rule of law, if it is not accessible to
all in a timely manner?

------
praptak
Why don't consumers boycott the trolls out of existence? It's not like there
is a huge cost of switching golf balls, right? And the consumer base isn't
companies whose deciders spend someone else's money.

~~~
scott_karana
The feedback loop is poor, even if you ignore biases.

How do consumers _know_ their favourite brand is filing lawsuits, much less
know if they're frivolous?

------
pkolaczk
"But we couldn’t afford to fight the case" I think there must be something
very wrong with the court system in USA. This is the one who claims their
patents have been infringed that should prove at the court and pay the price
for filing the lawsuit, including the cost of the experts hired by the court.
Why are the costs of defense so high in this case?

------
kevin_thibedeau
Why not just make a $1 ball using all of the expired 1990's era patents from
the top manufacturers. You'd make a mint. Name it the Patentless.

~~~
zanny
The article goes into why. It doesn't matter if you actually infringe the
patents, they will sue you for their entire patent portfolio and bankrupt you
trying to dismiss all the frivolous charges.

------
bodyloss
Why is it that the patent holder doesn't have to make a case with proof of
infringment? Would it not make sense that if you want to defend a patent, you
should show you've made the effort of documenting how someone is infringing?

------
xroche
This is why most patents should be eradicated. They only allow established
companies to stay in business despite lack of innovation and price
competition. The whole patent system is abused by parasites.

------
albeebe1
I was half expecting to read an article about counterfeit golf balls, or a
factory side selling its customers product. Not even close, this is
interesting.

------
chmike
Could this be a tactic to chose the trial location and avoid Texas ?

