Before the turn of the century, little 8-year-old me played with Legos all day but wanted more variety than castles and spaceships. So, I wrote to Lego corporate, suggesting new themed sets: cowboys and indians, sports arenas, dinosaurs, submarines vs mutant sharks, maybe some licensed Star Wars sets if they could work out a licensing deal... and some exec sent me back a nice but firm letter saying thanks but no thanks for the suggestions, as their legal guys have told their design guys not to consider input from customers because patent blah copyright liability blah blah.
In the next 2-3 years, nearly everything I asked for came true, starting with the Aquazone underwater action sets in '95 I think. Did 10-year-old me lawyer up and demand a settlement from them for my unsolicited yet uncompensated input? Hell to the no, I bought every Lego research sub and laser-mounted techno-shark I could get my hands on, and remained a happy and loyal customer.
My point is that a company can have it both ways: Listen to your customers' input in good faith, but still send the CYA letter telling them that such suggestions are not usually considered for legal reasons (but by voluntary sending it in you've lost the right to claim IP, much like how FB lays claim to any and all of its users' content that it hosts). Then if it's actually a decent idea, flesh it out and do it because customer happiness leads to success. Everybody wins, good vibes all around, and they still have their CYA letter as a legal shield in case some litigious asshat comes a-trolling.
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Back in the day...
In the next 2-3 years, nearly everything I asked for came true, starting with the Aquazone underwater action sets in '95 I think. Did 10-year-old me lawyer up and demand a settlement from them for my unsolicited yet uncompensated input? Hell to the no, I bought every Lego research sub and laser-mounted techno-shark I could get my hands on, and remained a happy and loyal customer.
My point is that a company can have it both ways: Listen to your customers' input in good faith, but still send the CYA letter telling them that such suggestions are not usually considered for legal reasons (but by voluntary sending it in you've lost the right to claim IP, much like how FB lays claim to any and all of its users' content that it hosts). Then if it's actually a decent idea, flesh it out and do it because customer happiness leads to success. Everybody wins, good vibes all around, and they still have their CYA letter as a legal shield in case some litigious asshat comes a-trolling.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by philthepill.
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