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On 10/04/2011 12:54 PM, Hsuan-Yeh Chang wrote: > That's part of the litigation strategy. If you've ever sued or get > sued, you would know that many of the particulars are not pleaded in > the initial complaint. It often takes years for the court to figure > out whether the allegation stands or not. SCO vs. IBM was similar. During discovery, SCO kept adding things. In SCO's scenario, the longer that litigation lasted, the more they could try to get Linux users (especially corporate) to pay their Linux license fee. Subsequently Novell knocked the legs out of that litigation by waiving the Unix IP that SCO claimed it owned. This caused SCO to sue Novell which SCO essentially lost after a couple of trials summary judgments and 2 appeals. I think one of the biggest issues is not patents per se, but the fact that litigation can take many years even before the first trial. As we saw in SCO vs. IBM, SCO was able to threaten (and sue) end users which caused Red Hat, HP, and others to issue insurance to their customers. Note that the SCO vs. IBM case was initially a contracts case where IBM had their Unix license issued by AT&T way before Novel bought USL from AT&T and sold the rights to enforce the contract to the original SCO. Once thing most of us do not consider here is the "litigation strategy". It is the companies and attorneys that know how to utilize the system. In many cases, it does not matter if the allegation stands or not, it is sometimes the fact that a company will settle even though it knows it can win. -- Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id:3BC1EB90 PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66 C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90
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