[mjg59]

I'm curious what you think the correct response to defamation is? At multiple opportunities (including the morning of the trial) Roy and Rianne were given the option of just removing the defamatory material and apologising and having the case dropped without having to pay anything. This is in no way my preferred outcome.

[zoobab]

Will read the court decision during Xmas time.

As a side note, my organization FFII eV was sued for defamation for criticizing patent trolling companies in the past:

https://edri.org/our-work/edrigramnumber3-16ffii/

My position was always to correct the statements, stick to the facts, and avoid wasting money on lawyers.

[mjg59]

I'd have been entirely happy with that outcome, and I sent Roy and Rianne emails asking for that before getting lawyers involved. Even then, the initial request was just for correction - we offered to settle several times after the case started, and Roy documented his refusal in https://techrights.org/n/2025/11/04/We_Turned_Down_Every_Set... . As I said, these efforts continued until the morning of the trial, when I explicitly told my lawyers to make an offer that would involve Roy and Rianne paying nothing.

The way English court costs work is that if someone offers a settlement that would be more favourable than the court eventually orders (ie, the defendant could have settled for less than the damages the court orders, or the claimant could have settled for more than the damages the court orders) and that settlement is refused, then additional damages and costs are due as a consequence of refusing the early settlement offer and costing everyone more money. But for this to work, the court cannot be told about the settlement offer until afterwards - otherwise the judge could be influenced. As a result, there won't be any discussion of settlement offers in the judgement.

(This does have an unfortunate consequence - a defendant who wants to keep a case out of court can make a settlement offer that's higher than the court is likely to offer, and if the claimant refuses then the entire exercise ends up being much more expensive)

[sidewndr46]

This seems like a case where some application of Game theory would lead to a prediction of an unusual outcome being the most common one.