Comment by kramerdj

As we described a bit in a previous post at the end of the litigation -- https://blog.cloudflare.com/winning-the-blackbird-battle/ -- in addition to the money we paid for the crowdsourced bounty, we also had to pay considerably to litigate the case. Even though we won the underlying litigation as quickly and convincingly as possible, we still spent more in legal fees than Blackbird might have been able to recover in damages after trial. That's why settling / licensing will always make more short-term economic sense, and keep trolls alive.