If ever we needed confirmation that markets, not courtrooms, should decide the technologies we use, witness SCO Group's reborn dream to sue all of UNIX-dom into its wallet. It was a specious lawsuit in 2003 when SCO Group (now Xinuos) first launched its $1 billion broadside against IBM. It's even more farcical today. Sadly, it's not clear that the legal fights between Apple and Samsung, or Oracle and Google, are much better.

First, to SCO Group.

SCO Is Like A Cockroach

You can be forgiven for thinking bankruptcy, unsympathetic judges and the truth would have killed SCO's chances of getting its $1 billion IBM payday. That is, you can be forgiven for thinking that occasionally common sense prevails in the courtroom. But as Groklaw notes, a judge has just granted SCO Group (Xinuos) a new lease on its litigious life. Basically, Xinuos wants a "redo," suggesting that its bankruptcy proceedings unfairly foreclosed its ability to troll.

And let's be clear: this is all about trolling.

It's perhaps fitting that the company that acquired SCO Group's assets, Xinuos, lists four members of management, three of whom are operations and sales-focused (read: keeping costs down while they swing for the litigation fences), and only one is an engineer. That engineer is too embarrassed to show his face:

This is a company set up to sue. In common parlance, it is a troll. Fittingly, it's headquartered in Las Vegas, where the culture of rolling the dice on speculative "investments" pervades.

SCO Group reborn as UnXis renamed to Xinuos should be dead. The lawsuit that tormented the industry for years should have been declared stillborn when first launched. And yet we continue to live with this silly charade.

More Respectable Lawsuits

Not that industry litigation between respectable companies fares much better. 

Samsung just got a ban on Apple's importation of old iPhones. Previous to this, Apple won $1 billion from Samsung plus an injunction against Samsung shipping certain phones. The injunction was subsequently wiped out and the damages were trimmed 43%.

It's a tit-for-tat with no end (or victor) in sight.

The same holds true for Oracle's lawsuit against Google over the use of Java in Android. The two parties trade victories and defeats, then appeal, and cross-appeal ad nauseum. The only winners in this and other lawsuits are the attorneys collecting fees.

The Market Rolls On

Despite all of this nonsense, consumers and businesses continue to make purchasing decisions based on quality and value, not lawsuits. Linux has eclipsed UNIX and threatens Windows. Android dominates the mobile landscape. Not one of these inane lawsuits has changed these facts.

So why do credible firms like Apple and Oracle follow the lead of trolls like SCO Group?

Perhaps they hope to delay the inevitable. If Apple can slow Samsung's market share gains, it stands to make even more profits. 

Or perhaps they hope to get paid for others' successes. Microsoft makes serious money on Android, despite not contributing anything of value to its development. Oracle may hope to achieve the same in its lawsuit with Google, but part of its strategy may simply be to ensure that others continue to license Java, even if Google refuses, as I've written before.

In some cases, technology firms sue in order to discover competitors' trade secrets in the course of the litigation.

Or maybe, just maybe, they're all suing, as Gizmodo opines, because the patent system is irretrievably broken and so much money is at stake in these emerging markets like mobile. 

In the case of Xinuos, however, there's just one reason for its cockroach-like existence: to roll the dice one more time in the hope of getting something for nothing. Let's hope it fails in a way that it finally, truly dies.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

As of February 5, Facebook is being sued by deceased Dutch programmer and apparent social web pioneer Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer, who passed away in 2004 - the year of Facebook's founding. The late Van Der Meer's justice will be sought by Rembrandt Social Media, the company that now owns his patents, and the law firm of Fish & Richardson. 

Thomas Edison's Legal Team v. Facebook

The lawsuit, filed in the state of Virginia's federal court, alleges that Facebook infringed upon two of Van Der Meer's patents. The first, U.S. Patent No. 6,415,316, introduced a "Method and apparatus for implementing a web page diary," which the suit will contend was a precursor to Timeline. The second, U.S. Patent No. 6,289,362, outlined a "System and method for generating, transferring and using an annotated universal address," and has the Like button in its sights. The patents were filed in 1998 and issued to Van Der Meer in 2002 and 2001, respectively. So both pre-date the 2004 launch of Facebook. Social bookmarking company Add This is also being sued for violation of the second patent.

While it's hard to imagine that such a strange case will have much ground to stand on, Fish & Richardson has deep roots in intellectual property, counting Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers among its early clients. Facebook's legal team hasn't been around since 1878, but isn't exactly new to this sort of thing. (And hey, it's hiring - this might be a long one, after all.) 

Patent-holder Rembrandt claims that the patents "represent an important foundation of social media as we know it" and is seeking royalties on this so-called foundational knowledge until 2021.

Um, Surfbook?

According to Ars Technica, it gets even weirder. Around the time he filed the patents, Van Der Meer also owned www.surfbook.com, though what he intended to do with the domain is a mystery. According to a Whois search, surfbook.com is now owned by brand protection group MarkMonitor. 

The IP claim on "web page diaries" would seem to have some big implications for pretty much the whole internet. Besides, some of us were already avidly documenting what we had for lunch on sites like Open Diary and LiveJournal in the internet dark age of 1999, back when Timeline was only a twinkle in Zuckerberg's eye. 

Image of Mark Zuckerberg by Taylor Hatmaker

Probe Expected

The probe was expected, given that HP announced last month it had proof that it had been conned in last year's $10.3 billion acquisition-turned-fiasco. At the time, HP said it had turned over the evidence to the Justice Department, the SEC and the U.K. Serious Fraud Office. "On November 21, 2012, representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice advised HP that they had opened an investigation relating to Autonomy," the company reported to the SEC Thursday.

HP claims Autonomy executives inflated the company's value by reporting some revenue prematurely or improperly. The alleged bogus reporting accounts for almost 60%  of the $8.8 billion write down HP booked last month on the Autonomy deal.

Ex-Autonomy Chief Executive Lynch responded to the investigation Friday by continuing to deny any wrongdoing. On a website Lynch set up to counter HP's allegations, he reiterated his complaint that HP has yet to release any details of the alleged scam. "Simply put, these allegations are false, and in the absence of further detail we cannot understand what HP believes to be the basis for them," Lynch wrote.

Details Still Hidden

HP is still keeping the details of the allegations confidential among itself, prosecutors and regulators. Thursday's filing did not provide any new details. Nevertheless, Lynch is ready to tell his side of the story. "We will co-operate with any investigation and look forward to the opportunity to explain our position," he wrote.

Throughout the claims and counterclaims, HP stock continues to get hammered. From the beginning of 2012 to Thursday, the price has fallen 45%.

Officially, the Federal Bureau of Investigation won't discuss whether or not it is involved in the case. However, an unidentified source told Bloomberg that the agency is assisting the SEC in its investigation.

While Autonomy execs are under the investigatory microscope, shareholders are blaming HP for the deal that ended up wasting billions of dollars. In the SEC filing, HP lists 10 lawsuits, including four class-action suits.

Apotheker Still Blamed

HP CEO Leo Apotheker, who was fired in September 2011, led the Autonomy deal as part of a plan to get HP deeper into the high-margin enterprise software business, while reducing its dependence on selling low-margin PCs. Autonomy software searches, organizes and manages data within large companies.

Apotheker sealed the end of his short career with HP when he announced he was considering the sale of its PC business. Because he had no buyer, Apotheker's disclosure sent Wall Street analysts into a tizzy. To them, Apotheker appeared to lack a clear vision or roadmap for saving HP from its years of bad deals, management turmoil and strategic blunders.

Current HP CEO Meg Whitman was on the company's board when it signed off on the Autonomy deal. Nevertheless, she has distanced herself and other board members from the debacle by laying the blame on Apotheker and then mergers and acquisitions head Shane Robinson, who also left the company in 2011.

History aside, now that federal prosecutors are officially involved, the repetitive claims and counterclaims being tossed back and forth between HP and Lynch won't matter much. The companies, their customers and shareholders now have to hope for clarity in the courts, especially if charges are filed.

Image courtesy of drserg / Shutterstock.