A Corporate “Thankyou”? No, Thanks
Citigroup isn’t asserting the right to use “thankyou” in all contexts—just when it comes to loyalty and rewards programs. But what it is asserting is bad enough, since in effect it’s saying that subtracting the space between “thank” and “you” (and using lowercase letters) is enough to make one of the most common phrases in the English language its private property, in this use. As such, the case illustrates just how out of control intellectual-property rights have become in the U.S.
.. Let’s hope the judge’s ruling is a simple “No, thanks, Citigroup.”
.. LinkedIn’s current operating cash flow is a little more than six hundred million dollars a year. Now, obviously, Microsoft did not buy LinkedIn for its current profits.
.. The fundamental economic issue here is that the stock prices of technology companies, with few exceptions, already reflect the market’s often-outsized expectations of fast earnings growth in the future. When you buy a share of Amazon or Facebook, you’re not paying for the company’s current earnings. You’re paying for its earnings over the next twenty-five or thirty or even fifty years, because that’s how far out the market is, in effect, looking.