No interest in a religious war here either. IMO SCO *may* have some
legal ground to stand on, but there's just as likely a chance they
don't. I can see plenty of reasons why they'd file a suit against IBM,
regardless of merit.

In the U.S. many large corporations (and some small ones too that have
a well stocked legal war chest) practice what I like to call
"intimidation through litigation". Basically you file a suit against a
competitor/enemy who's a potential source of income through a large
legal settlement or who you figure to financially harm or ruin in the
process. You keep them tied up with costly legal suits until:
a) you get a judgment against them
b) they relent and settle out of court with you ($)
c) you ruin them financially by bankrupting them.

Note the merits of the case are somewhat irrelevant. As long as you
cost the defendant more than you are willing to settle for, you win.
Sadly, in the U.S. it's possible to sue someone in a case with
virtually no merits.

I don't believe the legal environment will get much better in the U.S.
until judges summarily dismiss cases with no merit and punish those
bringing them with sanctions and fines. I am also starting to think a
"loser pays" civil litigation system like some European countries
employ is a good idea also.

Matt Pobursky
Maximum Performance Systems

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003 02:02:27 +1300, Russell McMahon wrote:
> > > This is typical microsoft bogosity, comparable to the recent
> > > unix nastiness from SCO.
>
> Not wanting to start a "religious" argument here, but I gained the
> impression, from the little I have read on the matter, that the SCO claims
> looked liable to have some merit. As I understand it, they are claiming that
> specific code fragments that are clearly their IP are found within the Linux
> kernel. This sounds like a readily provable claim in due course (or sooner)
> and it seems unlikely (to me) that they would make such claims if they had
> no merit whatsoever.

> I may well be missing something obvious here and would be happy to have it
> explained.

--
http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body