Sue a rival: It's a recession proof business model

Year-end is normally the time in a company's life when the sales team is desperately trying to turn potential customers into paying punters. It's a time when the bean counters get creative. And it's a time when the management team sets unrealistic targets for the next financial year.

It's not a time, typically, spent in court.

But in the space of a week we've seen a handful of high-profile court cases involving some of the biggest names in IT.

Yesterday, Compuware confirmed it is suing IBM for allegedly misappropriating intellectual property in its mainframe products. Earlier, Freeserve said it is taking the UK Customs and Excise to the High Court, claiming a ruling that left AOL exempt of VAT is in breach of European law.

The week started with Sun's latest assault on Microsoft - this time a $1bn lawsuit claiming loss of earnings as result of Microsoft's deliberate efforts to create software incompatible with Java.

Sun and Microsoft are no strangers to the courtroom, of course, but add AOL, Compuware, Freeserve and IBM to the lawyer's favourites and you'd be forgiven for thinking a trend is emerging.

Perhaps suing a rival has become a legitimate revenue stream in these harsh economic times. Forget the hardware and the software and feel the force of the law. No R&D, no launch strategy, no shipping, no channel and certainly no customers likely to spoil your day when they tell you their budgets have unfortunately been frozen.

The truth is this is nothing new. In the mid-1990s Netscape felt Microsoft was attempting to kill off its browser and went to court. Ditto Sun. Ditto the US government.

The commercial internet had barely got off the ground before dot-coms were trawling through patent laws looking for extra licensing revenues. Priceline got precious over 'reverse bidding', Accompany Inc claimed ownership of 'group buying', and Amazon.com took Barnes & Noble to court over the use of 'one click' ordering.

The 'one-click' saga finally drew to a close last week. While neither side would disclose the details of an out of court settlement, it is likely that Amazon was the overall winner in that particular dispute. The case will do nothing to dissuade litigious vendors.

The blame game is as much a symptom of a healthy economy as one struggling economy. But it does make you wonder if the best efforts of some of the industry's biggest players wouldn't be better serve in the pursuit of new customers, to say nothing of pleasing existing ones.