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...
Vermont gas distributors have the highest profit margins in the nation. The gasoline oligopoly here is committed to creating high barriers to entry. This includes buying their competitors just to remove the tanks on premise.
Costco decided they were going to distribute gasoline at its Colchester, VT location. They spent years in court battles with Skip Vallee, owner of R.L. Vallee, Inc., eventually went up to the Vermont Supreme Court, which handed out a decision last year that Costco is permitted to build a gas station.
I always hear stories about Costco being great to their employees, but now seeing that they're so pro-consumer as well makes me feel even better about shopping there pretty regularly. I'm not even their target market, but it's one of my favorite stores.
Costco is very pro-consumer. Management will not stock an item if they feel it's priced too high. Their Kirkland Signature brand is also pretty good quality I've found.
I worked for an insurance broker in the small business sector for a while generating new lead sources. Costco was one of the organizations I was talking to. They were very emphatic that they did not want to provide insurance through brokers, because they felt a broker was unable to guarantee the level of service they wanted.
I was very impressed by that. Our CEO, not so much. I'm sure he still thinks Costco hates money.
The Kirkland Signature brand is actually typically rebranded goods from industry mainstays. Their beer, for instance, is rebranded Gordon Biersch, which is pretty good beer, by all accounts.
Having sold to CostCo before, I can attest that it forces inefficiencies out of the process very quickly. And they will not accept an inferior product, either. Also they have efficiency built into every aspect of their business, down to the specific layout of the shipping crates to be sent, to minimize worker labor for setup and display of product.
I don't see where the other (bad) edge of the sword is.
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.
As someone with average -13 diopter correction, I've been told by my trusted ophthalmologist that I'm a bad candidate for LASIK, due to the fact that my eyes being so long will just push the correction back out over time.
Sounds like your parent comment's doc may not have been 100% accurate with their candidacy, or—the more cynical answer—wasn't 100% honest.
Checkout laserfitlens.com. I am not affiliated, but was considering instead of the PRK that I did. Scleral lenses are can be very useful for high corrections like yours.
No way. Too much risk regardless of the reward. My vision is fully correctable. After LASIK, my vision might not be fully correctable. Since I need to see to do my job, this is not a risk I will ever take.
Myself and many of my former coworkers got LASIK last year. Use or lose HRA = cheap LASIK.
Everyone seemed very happy, myself included. Halos are no worse than with contacts (maybe better). After recovery use of eye drops for dryness is no more frequent than with contacts.
If you live in the northeast US consider getting it done in Canada. I knew a few people who went to Toronto to have it done for half the price.
My surgery was pretty good, but just for 2 years. Then astigmatism returned in a higher degree and instead of myopia I got hypermetropia (but to a much smaller degree).
Amen, brother. I struggled with contacts for the longest time, ditching them and getting lasered was the biggest life upgrade I could've imagined. Small haloing at night is a tiny price to pay.
Everyone is different of course. My contacts were getting increasingly uncomfortable for me, so it made sense in my situation.
To this day, LASIK has been by dollar value, far and away the best thing I've ever done. I've been the tipping point to convince a few of my friends to get it done as well. I have no side effects, a few years after.
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.
To add to this, not only does the current technology not have halos, but your peripheral vision will increase as well.
I had mine done a few years ago on a state of the art machine (at the time), called the Allegretto Wave Laser. No blades - just one laser to cut the flap, and another to shape the lens.
Result - in 17 seconds (per eye time of the laser doing it's work), I went from 20/400 with a bad astigmatism to 20/15. A week later it had improved to 20/10 in one eye, and 20/12 in the other. Overall, it took 5 minutes or less of time laying down, including all adjustments.
This year celebrates 10 years without glasses, and I am finally needing to start looking at reading glasses for some situations (small print at a close distance). The great thing is that I have thick corneas, and they can actually shape them again to get rid of that as well - which I'll do in a couple years when I hit 50.
The only greater miracle I have had is the birth of my son. If you can, I highly recommend it.
I will say, aside from the quality of the surgery and the awesome outcome -- the "marketing" for this is intense and actually feels crazy to me.
I suppose this is because the machine is expensive and you need to recoop your investment, plus most people are being sold glasses and contacts from their doctor as that is the default.
It does take effort to educate people about new options and it's an elective surgery where if you go with the alternative you don't really know what you are missing...
> The process is $4k-$5k but with financing comes down to about the same you spend on glasses or contacts annually.
My eyes aren't perfect, but I've spent about $500 on glasses in 10 years. How much do others spend? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around financing $5k for eyes (not saying it bad, just not close to my experience).
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.
Or worse. It's the reason I'll never have the surgery... the risk is very small but if something were to happen to my eyesight it would be devastating. Glasses aren't so bad.
It's also just not necessary for most of us four-eyes. The costs of the surgery appear to be about what I would pay for 40 years worth of glasses (I buy a new pair once every four years or so), so it won't safe me money — or not a lot.
I'm so used to glasses that I might not even be more comfortable or live a more convenient life (and glasses are simply part of my identity after nearly 30 years of wearing them).
So there is very little (to no) incentive to actually get surgery to correct my eyesight. But the surgery is not without risks, as small as they may be, so there is a disincentive.
I can imagine that this is different for people who wear lenses because they are slightly more cumbersome.
Sure. But halos seem pretty common - every person I know who got LASIK done in the past 10 years experiences got them to some extent, my dad almost had a nervous breakdown because for the first year after the surgery the halos were so bad he couldn't really drive at night - they sort of faded away with time but he said they were always there and in hindsight, he wouldn't have selected surgery.
Certainly a risk. This is one of those areas where watching the latest tech development is worthwhile, as it's moving rapidly.
I got a laser-only procedure done about 5 years ago now, and it's been the best decision of my life. I had halos for about 6-12mo, but I also had minor halos before the surgery too - so I really haven't noticed much of a difference.
One thing you should either really really do, or really really don't do (I still can't decide) is walk the Vegas strip at night the day after surgery like I did. You will have major halos/starbursts at that point, and it's the closest to a random private laser show as I've ever gotten in life. I suppose drugs may be less risky and cheaper though...
I would be a bit difficult to give source on my personal friends and my dad, it's an anecdote :P Treat it like everything on the internet said by a random person - with caution. Just because everyone I know who got LASIK done has halos doesn't mean it's commonplace - could be just a coincidence.
I went from glasses and astigmatism to LASIK and halos.
I would still do it again and recommend it.
The quality of life improvement is tremendous and the amount of money saved on not getting the glasses re-done every year offsets the cost of the LASIK.
Halos, really only at night, is corrected by wearing a yellow tint "sunglass" aka shooters glasses while driving.
Plus my SO really doesn't like my driving, so i chill out in the passenger seat anyway. They feel more in control and i can get some sleep.
This makes no sense, unless you were a kid why would you have to get your glasses "re-done" every year? I've been wearing the same prescription for a decade and the same plastic frames for seven years. I go to the ophthalmologist every two years to get my optic drusen looked at and my corrected vision is fine. If I didn't go for my drusen I would have no reason to go. If your vision is so unstable that you were getting a new prescription every year then you are an likely a very poor candidate for LASIK and your LASIK vision would just revert anyways.
The only time I had to get a new prescription every few months was when I was a child so my vision was changing rapidly.
>Halos, really only at night, is corrected by wearing a yellow tint "sunglass" aka shooters glasses while driving.
Please do not wear these glasses while driving. They are dangerous [1]
I'm not sure where you get your Informaton but for one, in order to re-order contact lenses you must have a current rx (within 1-2 years) and it is standard to get an eye exam every year. Many people have eyesight that progressively gets worse and require a new rx yearly.
If your vision is so unstable you need a new RX every year your LASIK isn't going to last very long. Hence you probably are a very poor candidate for LASIK and it makes no sense from a strictly financial sense.
Unless you wear contacts, which can get pretty expensive, but probably not as expensive as LASIK that lasts 10 years.
I'm not sure why you'd get an eye exam every year unless you were having problems or needed a new prescription.
> Many people have eyesight that progressively gets worse and require a new rx yearly.
And many people have had the same prescription for 4-5 years or more, and don't have eyes that continue to get worse.
I think the GP's point was that either your eyes continue to get worse every year, and you need new glasses, and LASIK probably won't last forever, or you don't, and LASIK is a one-time expense that will take quite a while to break even on in a strictly financial sense.
I'm sure your ophthamologist will be happy to recommend getting exams as often as possible, like your dentist.
I've had the same prescription for 10 years. I had the same glasses for 10 years until I bought new ones for cheap on the internet this year using a 3 year old prescription.
> This makes no sense, unless you were a kid why would you have to get your glasses "re-done" every year?
I don't know about the parent poster above, but my vision is slowly but consistently getting worse every year, for the last five years now. I get my glasses "re-done" each year because my prescription has changed (gotten slightly stronger) each year, and it's cheaper to get new glasses than to re-lens old ones.
If I didn't stare at a screen for 60 hours a week, minor prescription changes might not matter so much. But since I do, wearing a prescription that's only slightly off can still cause some headaches or eye pain.
Just hit the over 40 bump ... readers are necessary.
I went from needed bifocals to just readers and in 15 years; of wearing 1+ to 1.25+. Now, for fine detail work, i look like the guy from Toy Story 2 with magnifiers up to +4. SMTs are tiny !
Normal computer work, still +1s. I do need a lot more light though.
I got LASIK, and I had stable vision. It's saved me thousands of dollars now.
Not everyone is as careful and/or inactive as you :)
I've lost more pair of prescription sunglasses at the bottom of the ocean/lakes within a few years than you seem to have owned in total over the course of a decade. Basically glasses to me meant $500/yr in replacements due to breakage or losing them in various situations. Yes, completely my fault and preventable - but just not who I am. After beating myself up about this for years, I just realized I have better things to do with my brain cycles than keep track of glasses.
For me LASIK was an amazing quality of life improvement, and while I didn't do it for the financial benefits it's certainly paid for itself a few times over 6 years later.
Edit: This is also completely ignoring the pita of keeping your glasses clean throughout the day. I know from experience most people aren't bothered by dirty glasses (ugh, this is super distracting in meetings for me) but I cannot stand it. I'll replace cheap sunglasses that get a single scratch on them it's so distracting to me.
Plus stuff like being able to do things like buy 10 pair of knockoff sunglasses for $15 vs. a $200 prescription set. Or being able to actually watch 3D movies that don't completely suck. Or go off-roading and wear a mask comfortably. Or go diving. The list goes on. For those who can't wear contacts, I can't imagine not getting LASIK if it were an option.
I was replying to the person who needs new glasses because of unstable vision and strictly from a financial perspective.
I know it's common for adults to change vision but usually once a year is a frequency more seen in children and teens. At least from my experience talking to people and being in an ophthalmologist chair since infancy. I was a frequent flyer at the ophthalmologist's office as a child (once a month was common for a while) and I had lots of questions.
EDIT: I haven't actually heard a lot about the elderly so I don't know their typical frequency of vision change. The only data point I have is a 60 year old I knew who got LASIK and was back in glasses in about 2 years.
On an unrelated note, I went to the same ophthalmologist for 20 years and it was eerie how it never changed. The ophthalmologist always looked the same, he always had the same staff and they looked the same, and the office didn't change. After a while it was like stepping into a time machine when I went there.
Between the ages of 12-25 or so, my sight got progressively worse and I needed a new prescription roughly every year. For the next 15 years, my sight stabilized at -8.5. For the last few years, my prescription has decreased slowly (I'm -6.75 now, which is a little inconvenient).
Until I started wearing contacts, I got new lenses for my glasses every year.
Presbyopia, and I depend upon both eyes for coding work, so monovision correction is not workable for me (I'd end up wearing glasses for a significant fraction of my waking hours anyways). I'm following the results of the IntraCor procedure, which so far are promising.
Seriously unless you're budget constrained, so much better. Cost twice as much as 2-week lenses, but you get to crack open a sterile pair each morning. Toss em at night.
Yup they are so much more comfortable. If you are running low and only wear them around 12 hours, you can even clean them and wear them another day (definitely not recommended by the manufacturer or eye doctor).
> not recommended by the manufacturer or eye doctor
I never found a technical explanation of why you shouldn't reuse dailies after overnight cleaning. I looked at papers, manufacturers' websites, and spoke to two ophthalmologists.
Though not a safety issue, my own experience is that dailies are more fragile than long-term lenses. (Could this be deliberate?) They fit less comfortably after a week of reuse. Also, they sometimes develop a very tiny nick at the periphery after many days; when that happens you feel it the moment you put it in.
My rule of thumb is that I reuse dailies for 5 days--disinfecting each day of course--and throw them out. The ophthalmologists, who are friends and can speak freely with me, agree that my regimen is fine.
Dailies are more comfortable because they are softer and more porous. That lets more oxygen through and reduces irritation. But it also makes them less resistant to scratches and tears. That's why the manufacturers say you shouldn't clean and reuse them.
Source: my sister manages an optometrist's office.
My personal belief is that since they are made more fragile (I believe it's intentional), you risk the contact tearing while in your eye or not keeping the shape which could maybe cause a deformation to your cornea/eye(?) if used for a prolong time. I only think this because I always swam with my 2 week disposables in and my eye doctor got 'angry' when he saw my contacts were a little deformed from water exposure.
What about your vision is such that dailies can't correct for it, but other contacts can?
Is it that you can't make use of "soft" contacts in general for this, or just (presumably) that making contacts to correct for this would be sufficiently costly for daily disposibles as to be infeasible?
Not the parent, but in my case - mild astigmatism - dailies are too big and floppy and don't stay put on my eye. 14 or 30 day are thicker and easier to put in. I use them rarely - just for skiing, and I end up using the 14 day ones once or twice and then throwing them away. But the daily ones are just mechanically awkward and uncomfortable.
Try different brands. My wife had the same problem when she went to an astigmatism lense they were too floppy and very difficult but persisted and changed brand/type (still dailies) and they're much better.
Yeah, I wear daily disposable contacts for doing LARP stuff where being hit over the head with rubber swords isn't uncommon, and I am increasingly astigmatic; my old optician was unable to find daily disposables that would correct the astigmatism [ * ], while my new optician could. (The new contacts are amazing.) It's totally worth keeping looking.
[ * ] Wearing lenses that correct for short-sightedness but not astigmatism is weird. I can see perfectly well, except that text is unreadable. Just text. I wonder if this is how dyslexics feel.
Additionally, I normally wear glasses, and whenever I put my lenses in my first thought is always 'wow, my feet are huge!'...
I have found a few dailies that correct fairly severe astigmatism and is comfortable to wear. They work, when they stay put. Unfortunately they tend to rotate ever so slightly every now and then, and it so annoying that I'm back to glasses
kerataconus, which involves mild to severe astigmatism and a deformed cornea. from what i've read, it's a bit of both. there's a couple of newish soft contact designs i've heard of, but also there's the cost. at a point, glasses don't even provide sufficient correction.
When I first got contacts, dailies weren't available in my correction (mildly shortsighted with strong astigmatism).
By the time I needed a second batch they had become available.
Things change, maybe you could get your optometrist to order some samples for you?
That's interesting. I did wear contact lenses (either 15 days or 1 month) for a decade. After a while my sight deteriorated further (unrelated to contact lens use) and I started using glasses more, and then exclusively.
When I tried to switch back to contacts, with a better prescription [1], I found out that I couldn't stand a full day of them anymore, they just weren't comfortable. Later I realized that I had switched to dailies; when I tried bi-weeklies or monthlies again, they were still as comfortable as I remembered.
[1] I'm short sighted, and although I'm technically not astigmatic, I have need a strong astigmatism correction as well. For the same reason I can't get LASIK either.
Can't yet, much as I'd like. :-( I require torics, and for some reason the many dailies we tried wouldn't stay in their "up" orientation. My optometrist said that in a year or two, he thinks some of the newer dailies in the development pipeline might address my experience, and we'll try dailies again at that time. Has something to do with the weighting of the lenses, I gathered from overhearing his conversation with one of his assistants, but the sudden, unpredictable blurring after blinking being a safety hazard was all the explanation I needed at the time.
I use toric dailies and it's the blinking that aligns the orientation. Once the angle is correct after blinking, the lenses then don't seem to rotate further. (I use '1-day Acuvue Moist for Astigmatism')
Clarification: even sequential blinking did not realign the lenses we tried, for some odd reason. Dailies would be really awesome to be able to wear, because I only wear contacts for water sports and when dressing up, so I end up throwing out the 30-day lenses after only a handful of uses. Thanks for pointing me towards what you use, I'll ask my guy to try them on me if he hasn't already when I go in for my annual.
Dailies aren't appropriate if you want the option of sleeping with your contacts in. I rarely do it, but I still want the option just in case I end up spending the night somewhere unexpectedly.
For some reason daily contacts dried out very fast for me. Often they would be uncomfortable in 8-10 hours. I didn't have this problem with bi-weeklies.
A No-Rub solution was not an option? I can just take em out, store them in No-Rub solution overnight and repeat that for a month before they start to deteriorate.
While we're on the subject, I'm glad Costco does this.
I was just shopping for new eyeglasses this week, and the difference between going to an in-network shop and going to Costco (out of network) is beyond insane. For something that will cost me under $100 for both frames and lenses after reimbursement from Costco, I estimated that I would have paid almost $300 out of pocket after in-network coverage.
Costco might not do enough volume to drive market cost down, but I certainly appreciate that they provide a sane alternative to crazy markups on eyeglasses in stores.
> 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!"
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.
> “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.
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).
> The sorry consolation is that the threats are a sure sign of success, he says: “We laughed when we got the lawsuit. We knew we made it.”
Yeah, really not understanding this thinking. The preceding sentence claims that they received no payment from Acushnet/Titleist, but I can't understand this attitude otherwise. Maybe they'd laugh if they were playing a round of golf, but this is a real life business, not a game.
The linked 2015 Golf Digest article [1] uses very different language and responses, calling the decision to shut down "painful" and "very tough". Further, they say:
> "Each company denies Acushnet's allegations and intends to vigorously defend itself in the case."
I'll grant that there is some time which elapsed between these articles and the incidents surrounding them, but I find it hard to imagine that their attitudes could have changed so drastically.
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…
It also seems plausible that they simply couldn't afford to pay the requisite legal fees and any associated penalties (e.g. not being able to sell, get new contracts, etc.) to fend off the law suit.
A plausible response in the software field, perhaps, but golf balls? Surely it's some effort to design a ball (or several), set up manufacturing, logistics, distribution, sales channels, marketing... I can't speak for the buy-side of driving ranges and miniature golf, but most regular golfers have at least some brand loyalty--a Slazenger, Maxfli, and Callaway are not perfect substitutes.
The source of commentary for this article is pretty suspect, I mean, how did Quartz find golf-patents.com? It seems like the sort of domain which would be set up by a golf patent troll to support a story about them holding patents.
The whois data for golf-patents.com lean toward this line of reasoning. The domain appears to be registered to an IP law firm. I'm not going to claim that they are a troll or a firm which enables trolls, but it is suspect in itself that they are referenced directly.
Acushnet Company does in fact manufacture, market, and sell golf balls, so it is reasonable that they could bring a patent suit as long as it does not turn out to be frivolous. It would be nice to have a system of laws which makes it fair for genuine victims of infringement to file and try suits without bankrupting competitors before the case is settled.
I was under the impression that filing baseless lawsuits was a tort. Furthermore attorneys are required to make a good-faith investigation of their client's case and refuse to take part in frivolous lawsuits. This may be a pretty low bar, but it sounds like Acushnet's attorneys may be failing to clear it.
From personal experience defending such suits, the bar is effectively so low to be imperceptibly higher than ground level. In the rare case it would be relevant, it's just as expensive or moreso to make that claim as defend the underlying case.
In this case, based on just reading the article alone, it would be a very hard claim to make against Acushnet. Even if the patents could be invalidated, until they are they have the presumption of enforceability.
This. The standards of vexatious litgtation are quite high, as they out to be. Otherwise every defendant would cry tort, and legitimately harmed parties would be dissuaded from using the legal system.
I think someone complained to Quartz that their articles were biased, so the writer here decided to represent both angles. ("they're just doing business" vs "they're bullying any competition") In my opinion, one of the most difficult lessons the internet age will have to learn is that the truth isn't always in the middle, and that both sides are not exactly the same.
Its not an internet age mistake. Greeks knew about it. It's called the "middle path fallacy." And most people subscribe to it because of the terrible liberal mindset in education and pop culture that screams and bleeds for equality of all ideas -- even lies and bullshit.
I suppose that "legitimate" here is used in the literal sense, as in "lawful" or "legal".
Unfortunately, these are the rules of the game. Small players may know this and plan accordingly. So when the inevitable happens, they may not like it but they don't need to hold a grudge to the company that did exactly as planned.
Which part are you commenting on? Is it the use of the word "legitimate"?
Because suing someone for patent infringement is a "legitimate" course of action, i.e. it's a lawful thing to do.
In fact (AFAIK IANAL etc etc) it's the only way to ascertain whether a patent is being infringed or not without working with the opposition directly and sharing trade secrets outside the context of a court room with proper protections, something I doubt anyone would be particularly happy about.
If it's the "don't really begrudge the approach" part. I don't know that any of us really have the knowledge from within the golfing industry to know what different companies think of the practice.
I think you missed the part where they implied these lawsuits are often completely without merit. It's abuse of the parent system to stifle competition, and we're supposed to believe business owners just shrug it off after they're bullied into bankruptcy?
> “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
If the cases were settled out of court then we have no reliable way to determine whether they had merit. It's just speculation by the writer and interviewees.
I know, I was just replying to the parent's comment and highlighting that suing (AFAIK) is the only way to enforce patent rights. Apart from maybe threatening to sue, but same-difference there really.
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?
Ehh, you can get perfectly serviceable balls for even cheaper than the costco ball.
I bought 10 dozen Top Flite Gamer balls as my winter ball (you tend to lose more balls in the winter due to plugging into the ground, taller rough, etc.) for $9.99/dozen on Christmas sale. I play $48/dozen balls regularly as well, but I'm perfectly content playing the $1 ball.
MSRP-wise, Pinnacle balls have been a perfectly fine ball for beginner to intermediate golfers for decades. (I used to be an advanced level player but dropped the game for a decade, and when I picked it up again I opted to use a Pinnacle ball for a few years for the roi)
The reason the Costco ball is alarming to the premium ball manufacturers isn't because a cheap good ball exists now (they always have existed), but because a cheap great ball (i.e. tour pro level) threatened to destroy their margins. Basically, it would destroy the "money buys you performance" marketing mystique (even though for 99% of players, they don't get the clubface/ball contact to get that performance out of the ball anyways).
Also you can get really good equipment for quite cheap on ebay. It's not like technology has changed much for most of the set. My favorite irons are from 1991. (that being said, unless you know someone who really knows their equipment, bargain hunting on ebay might be difficult due to information overload)
The decline of the game is due to a variety of factors. Most important of these is Tiger Woods' demise, and secondary factors include pace of play at golf courses (rounds should be less than 4 hours, not 5+) as well as the inflated prices at many of these places that happened during the boom years.
Avid golfer here, while I agree with your premise on the threat to Titleist that KSIGS present. I went out and played 4-5 rounds with the Kirkland Signature and it couldn't hold a candle to the tournament balls I normally play. For a competitive golfer, the ball just is not up to par. For your weekend warrior, its a perfectly fine ball and probably better than the prov1(x) as the cover is much harder and won't wear out as fast.
Whether that's true or not, I don't think it's enough to rely on the invisible hand to squelch this practice. The truth is, as long as it is advantageous to sue frivolously, companies will do it. And this is bad for the free market, the economy, and consumers.
Policy change should make it much more costly to launch a frivolous lawsuit (as distinct from a claim made in good faith), e.g. by making it much easier for a bullied defendant to counter-sue and win significant damages.
Similar to the email spam proposals, charge a modest fee for each motion filed.
Set it at a point that isn't a barrier for anyone filing a "normal" amount of motions, but where it increases to real money if your main business is filing large amounts of know-it-will-fail paperwork.
Filing motions is not their main business. Their main business is putting down competitors. In fact the only reason it works is that they have enough revenue that they can retain lawyers (expensive) to do these things without affecting their bottom line much. Lawyers aren't cheap for Acushnet either, they just have the cash to throw around.
Adding fees just hurts small players more. This sounds like a "solution" that makes the problem worse.
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).
> 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?
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.
No doubt that greens fees are certainly a barrier. The muni near me [1] (bordering the Boston city limit) charges $10 for a junior, which equates to about $2 an hour given the pace of play on a busy golf course. While I understand that is still not free, it is an very low barrier to entry.
Old clubs are very easy to come by (relatives, craisglist, loaners). The main thing that I feel is being overlooked on this thread is that balls can be had for free, given the child puts a small amount of time in to look for them. Walk along the tree line of any fairway in the world and it will not be long before you've found enough balls to fill your front pockets.
I have heard it is similar to archery. I have never played. I was an archer though.
But I dislike most sports that seem contrived (archery is a real skill that became a sport because the skill is not needed, golf is just a made up game as far as I can tell).
Arrows are selling for $5-6/each!Of course they were carbon fiber and had steel heads for hunting, but I couldn't help but wonder what happened to the inexpensive arrow.
> It requires extreme concentration in a way that I've never experienced in any other sport I've ever played.
I'm not a golfer but you might compare that concentration to what is required for archery, which I'm learning, and high power rifle marksmanship, which I learned when I was young. Golf's stigma doesn't approach that of shooting sports, depending on one's location/social circles.
I think any sport which requires performing a discrete task is going to be similar. I have never golfed, or tried archery or shooting in a sport setting, but I have been powerlifting for a few years. I assume the concentration aspect is similar.
Can confirm, golf has lead me to learning severe patience and attention to detail. Its multifaceted aspect has also taught me prioritization skills. Went from 11 to 6 handicap in 2016. Still am trying to get lower.
Golf is an insufferable sport. The land and resources that go into a golf course and all the equipment are a pure sign of feckless wastelessness. It's not possible to justify. Just be indignant if you like what amounts to 5 steaks a day.
Hi there - seems like you're getting some downvotes and as someone else who cares about the environment, I'd love to convince you golf can actually be a good thing for land use. Some of the courses I grew up playing on were old landfills. The golf course would cap and seal the landfill, then plant vegetation on top letting it grow and then eventually putting a golf course on it. What once was a landfill and source of rodents, disease, and an eyesore on the community became an effective use of the land. Now, not every golf course is built on a landfill, but you'd be surprised how often it happens:
http://americancityandcounty.com/mag/government_chicago_dump...
"The facility won top honors in the 1996 Superior Achievement for Excellence in Environmental Engineering competition sponsored by the American Academy of Environmental Engineering, which cited Harborside for addressing "the major criteria of the competition ... most important was the manner in which it met environmental and ecological concerns and contributed to an improved environment, using available materials to reverse perceived abuses and achieved significant cost reduction and control in course construction.""
The land use is what I dislike most about it. There are a few golf courses in Sydney in prime locations. All that land that can't really be used for anything else. The worst one is in Little Bay, next to the ocean. Countless balls hit into the ocean.
You can play for $20 or less at Muni courses. Hardly a status symbol tbh. If you mean private country clubs, well the most exclusive and high status of these are often social clubs rather than golf clubs (ex: Pacific Union and Bohemian Club in SF), and the activity of golf and the private club status symbol are separate things.
Though... I have heard several times that "cycling is the new golf", and the $10,000 bikes some folks wield certainly speaks to the flaunt your wealth side of things.
Anyways, for any expensive activity, I'm sure there are some people doing it as part of the status climb, some doing it to hang out with some power network, and some doing it purely for the joy of the activity.
Addendum: Skiing is way more expensive than golf due to the travel and lodging that is almost a necessity in the States.
I'm going to guess you live in or near San Francisco? Your view of golf is going to be skewed by that. While the Bay Area has extremely expensive and exclusive golf courses, it also uniquely has .. relatively.. affordable ones.
But consider even $20 to play a game involving a stick and ball is actually still quite expensive to a child, so that's still a really high barrier to entry for a lot of people.
Outside urban areas, there are still plenty of small local country clubs that provide "unlimited" golf facilities for Members & their kids for affordable rates. $100-300/month depending on area, quality, etc...
GolfNow and other TeeTime booking sites allow for discounted rounds in your area.
Its not as cheap as Tennis & Basketball, but its not a game for the Rich and Famous only.
Only appeal?? I play golf regularly and I play because I love it. My friends play cause they love it. What a feeling to stand on a tee box looking out over a wide fairway, driver in hand.
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...
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)
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.
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.
'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.
legitimate, to my mind, connotes at least some moral rightness. so i disagree. maybe the literal definition is "legal", but i think it would be more clear to say "legal" than "legitimate"
the tactic is legitimate, sure. But do ALL those people who succumb to the tactic really not begrudge the approach? I highly doubt it. QZ found one guy who was not upset and uses that to justify the prior claim... booo qz booo
I have been the victim of this tactic, and yes it is terrible. But it's also completely understandable. It's an extremely easy way for a company with deep pockets to bury a smaller company.
When you understand why someone does something - you can hate that they're doing it, but you also accept it in a weird way, because they're simply using the rules of the game.
And while you hope you would do better if you ever got to be in that situation the truth is probably, that most of the people getting suid in these situations would do the exact same things if the roles were reversed.
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.
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.
Prison seems fairly harsh. There are legitimate disagreements about what a patent covers, and to throw someone in prison over that would be ridiculous.
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.
Agreed. Penalties should be in the same form as the motivation: money, and lots of it. Sufficient to make people think twice about asserting a bogus patent again; the amount they claim in damages would be a good starting point. Lose a suit claiming $100m in damages, pay that amount to the winner.
Yes, that's arbitrary, but less so than East Texas patent awards.
I used to work for a law firm as a programmer/analyst, after that DMCA and changes to patent and copyright laws, it is easy to just sue a small company until their court costs and attorney fees exceed their income and they have to settle out of court or reach an out of court settlement.
Disney and other companies like DC and Marvel wanted the Trademark law to keep getting modified so they still owned the rights to their characters and they would not go into public domain as our founding fathers wanted.
Yeah, this is legal bullying, sort of like taking the competitor and roll them in a rug and start beating them with bats until they give up.
For me this only shows the flaws of the law system, doesn't it? The real problem is that defending costs are so high for businesses. If this would be covered by the government or some insurance until the case is resolved, the small companies that got sued could have fought this to the end and only go down if they actually infringed the copyright.
Loser pays makes filing these absurd cases a lot more expensive. If it's destined to lose and it's guaranteed to be paid, finding a lawyer is going to take it on is going to be really easy.
Well what if the balls performance is due to patented innovations that the company wants to protect? We don't know the facts here, just some blogs opinion.
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.)
It's even funnier, not only do they go through each patent and say they don't infringe because of X, they also say that each patent is invalid because of Y. And then they ask for money for their lawyers. :-D
> 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.
Do you not think there is a CAD model of that golf ball for making the mold for the cover? It isn't even a 10 minute job for someone to measure the dimple/surface area ratio.
>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
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.
Yeah, sure, it's pretty simple. But why won't anybody tell me what those numbers are? I'm not going out to Costco to buy a set of balls they no longer sell to find out. It seems so obvious that the easiest way to convince me X != Y is to tell me X and Y. Is that weird?
As a data point, the dimples aren't all the same size on the same golf ball. (I'm not a golfer but I looked at a lot of them for a machine vision project.)
"“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."
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.
You celebrate the small victories even when you know you're about to hit a big setback. They're not mutually exclusive. In fact being able to appreciate the wins despite the losses is partly how you stay resilient.
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.
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.
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.
That sounds great on paper, but in reality, all that does is prevent legitimate cases from advancing. It's already expensive as it is to take legal action against an offending party. You are assuming that every lawsuit is a money grab; it's quite the opposite.
I'm not assuming any such thing. I'm an attorney and understand the tradeoffs and I think society would be better off if these sorts of cases didn't waste everyone's time.
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.
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).
Yes, your idea is even better than what we have in Poland. In Poland we basically have "loser pays" but the legal costs returned by the loser are limited by law and typically depend on the type of the case and the amount of money requested in the lawsuit. These limits are lower than the typical cost of good legal companies. Therefore even if a big company with expensive lawyers wins, it will not get back all of its legal costs.
Except that my rule makes it easier to sue Google if you have a good case.
The whole point of "Loser Pays" is to filter out the frivolous, weak, and marginal cases. But it also makes it easier to file the strong and meritorious cases, because you know you're going to win (eventually), and they'll pay for it.
Of course because the strong cases get settled out of Court, the overall effect is that a lot fewer cases will go to Court at all and this is generally a good thing (IMO). The Court system is overburdened, which means it can take months or years for meritorious cases to just get a hearing and trial. Prisoners can languish for years in prison without conviction of guilt, just awaiting trial.
Furthermore you have to think about the unseen costs. All those businesses that are never formed in the first place because of these legal tactics. My guess is that small businesses that are put out business by lawsuits are outnumbered 100:1 or more by potential businesses that never get past the planning stages.
It shouldn't be based on actual costs but on an averaged estimation; and it shouldn't be automatic but left at the discretion of the court, specifically to punish frivolous litigation.
Besides what others said, "loser pays" gives incentive to increase total legal costs where people who think they have a strong case where the other will pay could spend absurdly on the suit. And it reinforces sunk cost too. Once you're into the case, you better do everything it takes to win at all costs (since you won't face the burden of any of those costs if you do win).
That's why there should be a limit on the costs that are returned by the loser, based on the average estimation. In Poland there is no point in spending absurdly, because you won't get anything over the limit back, regardless of who wins.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
"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?
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.
Probably because 1990's balls sucked, and were expensive to manufacture (wound cores?)
There are plenty of cheap golf balls using modern materials, designs, and manufacturing techniques out there. People just want to play what they see the pro's playing - because its one less thing they can blame their shitty performance on.
Club technology has not significantly changed in the past 10 years, but Golfers are always looking for an edge that does not require more practice...thus the constant new products.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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