In case you haven't heard, a company called SCO Group has been filing lawsuits left, right, and center claiming that they own copyrights in various parts of the otherwise free, open source Linux operating system:
Not only are they embroiled in litigation against IBM, they must also defend counterclaims by Red Hat; have threatened 1,500 Linux users for infringing its intellectual property rights and now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the "SCO Group plans to sue a major user of the Linux operating system for alleged violation of SCO's copyrights as part of an expanded legal effort ... to collect license fees from thousands of Linux users."
"When you do a Linux distribution, you are directly in the crosshairs of SCO's core products," SCO's CEO Darl McBride has said.
(The above is from IP Law Advisor.)
Now a professor at the Columbia University School of Law and General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, Eben Moglen, has spoken up in no uncertain terms:
There's a traditional definition of a shyster: a lawyer who, when the law is against him, pounds on the facts; when the facts are against him, pounds on the law; and when both the facts and the law are against him, pounds on the table. The SCO Group's continuing attempts to increase its market value at the expense of free software developers, distributors and users through outlandish legal theories and unsubstantiated factual claims show that the old saying hasn't lost its relevance.
You can read the rest of Mr. Moglen's thoughts here via The Inquirer.