The Recording Industry of America Association (RIAA) announced today that it is suing Santa Cruz Operations (SCO) for patent infringement. The infringment claim states the SCO is infringing on the RIAA's business model patent based on the idea of suing it's customers.
"We developed this business model of suing customers rather than trying to make a quality product and we are entitled to our intelectual property rights. Any time anyone sues a customer over a bullshit claim for the purpose of shaking them down for an unjust fee is an infringment", states a spokesperson for the RIAA.
In response to the suit, SCO filed a counterclaim stating that it owns a copyright to the copyright symbol and that the RIAA was violating it's copyrights by using the copyright symbol and the word "copyright" on it's product. At a press conference SCO displayed a slide from it's Unix source code with the copyright symbol and the words "All Rights Reserved" and compared it to an identical phrase on the back of CD covers. SCO is demanding a royalty of $700 for everytime anyone uses the copyright symbol or the phrase "All Rights Reserved".
In response to the SCO counterclaim the RIAA asked for an injunction baring the suit on the basis of infringment. "As a user of Linux ourselves we believe this suit is really about suing us as a customer and that should be barred because they are stealing our business model."
An attempt to contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their take on these lawsuits was unsucessful. EFF lead attorney Cindy Cohn was hospitalized with a broken rib from laughing to hard and had to be sedated.