<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>__s</author><text>The insurance being used to fight the patents seems good: it&amp;#x27;s effectively a way for the group to pool resources towards not paying out to patent trolls. The success of the insurance company should be based on the reduction of payments to trolling, even when counting the insurance as paying to patent trolls&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;d be most disheartening is if the insurance was just to pay off the patent trolls</text><parent_chain><item><author>roganartu</author><text>Insurance doesn&amp;#x27;t mitigate damage, it amortizes it (typically across a group of entities). The expected average annual claims on an insurer&amp;#x27;s policies need to be lower than the sum of the premiums or the insurer loses money.&lt;p&gt;This is why people in high risk categories pay more for insurance (eg young people and people with high performance cars have higher car insurance premiums because statistically they crash more often and&amp;#x2F;or have higher rates of total loss)</text></item><item><author>gowld</author><text>The insurance firm isn&amp;#x27;t exploitative. The patent troll is actively harmfully attacking people. The insurance firm (assuming they aren&amp;#x27;t secretly creating demand for their product) is mitigating the damage.&lt;p&gt;Locksmiths and firefighters aren&amp;#x27;t exploitative.</text></item><item><author>kelnos</author><text>It is ridiculously disheartening that this sort of thing even has to exist.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just taking the money you&amp;#x27;d be forced to pay some exploitative patent troll, and giving it (well, probably&amp;#x2F;hopefully less of it, but still) to an exploitative insurance firm instead.</text></item><item><author>Kelbit</author><text>While it doesn&amp;#x27;t help in this case (since there is already a looming legal threat from an NPE), you can buy patent troll insurance now: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rpxcorp.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rpxcorp.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;. This covers your legal fees in the event of litigation, which can scare off a patent troll who just wants a hit-and-run settlement.</text></item><item><author>jannotti</author><text>Trying to find other companies under the same threat is a great approach.  In a similar situation, this allowed my company to fight a patent troll and share costs, so we didn&amp;#x27;t cave under the, &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;ll cost us this much in legal fees anyway&amp;quot; argument.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game</title><url>https://www.clickerheroes2.com/patent_trolls.php</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>cestith</author><text>&amp;gt; The expected average annual claims on an insurer&amp;#x27;s policies need to be lower than the sum of the premiums or the insurer loses money.&lt;p&gt;All this time I thought they invested the float.</text><parent_chain><item><author>roganartu</author><text>Insurance doesn&amp;#x27;t mitigate damage, it amortizes it (typically across a group of entities). The expected average annual claims on an insurer&amp;#x27;s policies need to be lower than the sum of the premiums or the insurer loses money.&lt;p&gt;This is why people in high risk categories pay more for insurance (eg young people and people with high performance cars have higher car insurance premiums because statistically they crash more often and&amp;#x2F;or have higher rates of total loss)</text></item><item><author>gowld</author><text>The insurance firm isn&amp;#x27;t exploitative. The patent troll is actively harmfully attacking people. The insurance firm (assuming they aren&amp;#x27;t secretly creating demand for their product) is mitigating the damage.&lt;p&gt;Locksmiths and firefighters aren&amp;#x27;t exploitative.</text></item><item><author>kelnos</author><text>It is ridiculously disheartening that this sort of thing even has to exist.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just taking the money you&amp;#x27;d be forced to pay some exploitative patent troll, and giving it (well, probably&amp;#x2F;hopefully less of it, but still) to an exploitative insurance firm instead.</text></item><item><author>Kelbit</author><text>While it doesn&amp;#x27;t help in this case (since there is already a looming legal threat from an NPE), you can buy patent troll insurance now: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rpxcorp.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rpxcorp.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;. This covers your legal fees in the event of litigation, which can scare off a patent troll who just wants a hit-and-run settlement.</text></item><item><author>jannotti</author><text>Trying to find other companies under the same threat is a great approach.  In a similar situation, this allowed my company to fight a patent troll and share costs, so we didn&amp;#x27;t cave under the, &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;ll cost us this much in legal fees anyway&amp;quot; argument.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game</title><url>https://www.clickerheroes2.com/patent_trolls.php</url></story>