In some circumstances, the shrinking of the rent to the winning firm that arises from opponents' expenditures is mirrored by the consideration that the losing firms' expenditures were not pure losses. For example, losers in a patent race may still be positioned to capture some rent, if they can successfully innovate around the patent. Such effects can be incorporated into the rent shrinking model, by assuming that losing firms are reimbursed for some percentage of their expenditures. This approach also serves to unify the standard rent seeking game with the rent shrinking game. If none of the expenditures of losing firms are reimbursed, the game is one of pure rent shrinking. If the entire expenditures of losers are reimbursed, the standard rent seeking game emerges. As the share of losers' expenditures that are returned goes from 0 to 1, the game moves from pure rent shrinking to one of pure rent seeking, and an individual firm's expenditures monotonically increase.