In the '90s, it seemed like suing someone was the new American Way. That kind of died out after Dateline specials on the topic rendered it ridiculous, but now suing is coming back.

For the past year or so, a company called SCO has been suing companies which use Linux on their computers without paying them a licensing fee. This includes DaimlerChrysler, Autozone, and even IBM. Thankfully, because Big Blue got sued, it can fight back, and it has a lot of influence. SCO claims that the operating system UNIX (developed by AT&T in the 1970s), which it purchased the rights to, is an integral part of the Linux operating system. As such, it is demanding royalties from companies using Linux. This despite the fact that SCO has yet to prove that there is UNIX code in Linux, and it's not like they can't do a Google search and read Linux's source code.

Slashdot today reports that a company called Intermec is claiming patents on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology: chips, readers, and tags. Apparently, no one in the industry knew who, if anyone, held the patent on RFID technology, so various companies went ahead and created their own RFID technology. But in swoops Intermec, demanding that it be able to sell licenses since it claims it owns the patents. Says an Intermec spokesperson, "If we wanted to put Matrics out of business, we would have sought injunctive relief right out of the chute [...] Our chief objective is to secure a legitimate licensing agreement with Matrics." That is, it's more lucrative in the long run to sell licenses than to ligitate Matrics, one major producer of RFID technology, out of existence.

Slashdot has noticed this behavior before. It's called "submarining" and it occurs when a company who holds a patent on a product or process conceals the fact that it has that patent so as to gain royalties from it later, after the technology has become widely accepted. In 2001, the FTC launched a probe into whether or not Sun Microsystems submarined its patents for computer memory modules while at the same time helping to set an industry standard that made that same module the industry standard! Of course, no one would have accepted that standard if he knew that Sun held the patent, but no one did know because Sun concealed the fact that it held such a patent.

With Microsoft patenting the double-click and other nonsensical garbage (recall that Amazon patented "1-click shopping" and a British company patented the hyperlink), the door is open for abuse of these patents. Can you imagine paying a ten-cent royalty for every hyperlink on your page? At least the Electronic Frontier Foundation is going on a patent-busting spree, trying to have junk patents overturned.