So begins Verizon’s (VZ) response to AT&T’s (T) complaints about its new ad campaign, and as you can see below, it pulls no punches. For 53 pages–all of them very obviously drafted with publication in mind–the new filing mercilessly thrashes AT&T, proving over and over again that the carrier’s carping over Verizon’s ads has transformed a no-win situation into a horrific PR disaster that only highlights AT&T’s shortcomings.

“In the final analysis, AT&T seeks emergency relief because Verizon’s side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison of its own 3G coverage with AT&T’s confirms what the marketplace has been saying for months: AT&T failed to invest adequately in the necessary infrastructure to expand its 3G coverage to support its growth in smartphone business and the usefulness of its service to smartphone users has suffered accordingly. AT&T may not like the message that the ads send, but this Court should reject its efforts to silence the messenger.”

Brutal.

As I said earlier this month, if AT&T’s lawsuit over Verizon’s allegedly misleading “there’s a map for that” wasn’t a public relations mistake to begin with, it will be by the time Verizon gets through. And, indeed, the lawsuit already is a mistake. Below, Verizon’s reply in full:

PREVIOUSLY:

• Frosty’s Winter Litigation Wonderland: AT&T Demands Verizon Pull Holiday iPhone Ads [With Full Complaint]
• Verizon Banishes iPhone to Island of Misfit Toys
• Verizon on AT&T Suit: There’s a Word for That. “Junk.”
• Verizon to iPhone Users: “Want Five Times More 3G Coverage? There’s a Map for That.”

verizonresponse –

On November 9, 2009, the European Commission issued a statement of objections relating to the acquisition of Sun by Oracle Corporation. The Statement of Objections sets out the Commission’s preliminary assessment regarding, and is limited to, the combination of Sun’s open source MySQL database product with Oracle’s enterprise database products and its potential negative effects on competition in the market for database products. The issuing of a Statement of Objections allows addressees to present arguments in response to the Commission’s preliminary assessment of the competitive effects of a notified transaction. A Statement of Objections is a preparatory document that does not prejudge the European Commission’s final decision. Any final decision by the European Commission is subject to appeal to the European Court of First Instance.

Indignant that the EC would dare to bring the $7 billion deal into question, Oracle vowed to take it to the mat in a harshly worded rebuttal:

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun is essential for competition in the high end server market, for revitalizing Sparc and Solaris and for strengthening the Java development platform. The transaction does not threaten to reduce competition in the slightest, including in the database market. The Commission’s Statement of Objections reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics. It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source.

The database market is intensely competitive with at least eight strong players, including IBM, Microsoft, Sybase and three distinct open source vendors. Oracle and MySQL are very different database products. There is no basis in European law for objecting to a merger of two among eight firms selling differentiated products. Mergers like this occur regularly and have not been prohibited by United States or European regulators in decades.

The U.S. Department of Justice carefully reviewed the proposed acquisition during the normal Hart-Scott-Rodino review and considered it again when the European Commission initiated a second phase review. On both occasions the Justice Department came to the conclusion that there is nothing anticompetitive about the deal, including specifically Oracle’s acquisition of the MySQL database product. The U.S. Department of Justice approved the acquisition without conditions and terminated the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act on August 20, 2009.

Sun’s customers universally support this merger and do not benefit from the continued uncertainty and delay. Oracle plans to vigorously oppose the Commission’s Statement of Objections as the evidence against the Commission’s position is overwhelming. Given the lack of any credible theory or evidence of competitive harm, we are confident we will ultimately obtain unconditional clearance of the transaction.

And Oracle will evidently pursue its case with help from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, which also issued a statement on the EC’s move today:

After conducting a careful investigation of the proposed transaction between Oracle and Sun, the Department’s Antitrust Division concluded that the merger is unlikely to be anticompetitive. This conclusion was based on the particular facts of the transaction and the Division’s prior investigations in the relevant industries. The investigation included gathering statements from a variety of industry participants and a review of the parties’ internal business documents. At this point in its process, it appears that the EC holds a different view. We remain hopeful that the parties and the EC will reach a speedy resolution that benefits consumers in the Commission’s jurisdiction.

Several factors led the Division to conclude that the proposed transaction is unlikely to be anticompetitive. There are many open-source and proprietary database competitors. The Division concluded, based on the specific facts at issue in the transaction, that consumer harm is unlikely because customers would continue to have choices from a variety of well established and widely accepted database products. The Department also concluded that there is a large community of developers and users of Sun’s open source database with significant expertise in maintaining and improving the software, and who could support a derivative version of it.

The Department and the European Commission have a strong and positive relationship on competition policy matters. The two competition authorities have enjoyed close and cooperative relations. The Antitrust Division will continue to work constructively with the EC and competition authorities in other jurisdictions to preserve sound antitrust enforcement policies that benefit consumers around the world.

“On my birth certificate, under my father’s occupation, it says cowboy. So I will admit to being a cowboy, but not sue-happy.”

– Former SCO CEO Darl McBride, November 2003

Looks like Darl McBride, SCO’s “sue-happy cowboy” CEO, has seen his last roundup. In a new 8-K filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, the company reveals that under the order of a bankruptcy court, it has eliminated the chief executive officer and president positions and consequently sacked McBride.

Which means SCO’s seemingly endless legal campaign may have finally found its end. For though the company says it plans to pursue litigation against IBM (IBM) and Novell (NOVL), there seems little promise in it now. SCO is mired in bankruptcy. It’s evidently still unable to prove that Linux illegally contains its UNIX System V source code. And now it has fired the guy who devoted the past six years attempting to do just that.

And, frankly, SCO is better off for it. As Free Software Foundation General Counsel Eben Moglen once said, “As an amateur scholar of constitutional law, Mr. McBride is longer than he is deep.” And this does appear to be the case. Because despite vast swaths of evidence to the contrary, McBride always appeared certain that SCO had successfully defended its intellectual property in court.

“We’ve obviously overachieved on that objective,” McBride said of SCO’s efforts to defend against IBM’s alleged intellectual property infringements in 2004. “If I had to make this decision [to sue IBM] ten times over, the decision would be the same one ten times. Big Blue is no doubt a formidable opponent and we still expect to win. Keep your eye on the [court] filings. Over the coming year, one of the things that you’re going to see is that Big Blue has got big problems.”

Obviously, Big Blue wasn’t the one with the big problems.

The suit, over Joltid-owned peer-to-peer technology used in Skype’s software, seeks an injunction against Skype as well as damages that Joltid claims “are amassing at a rate of more than $75 million daily.”

A nasty surprise for Skype’s new owners: Silver Lake, the Silicon Valley-based private equity group; Index Ventures, the London-based venture capital firm; Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen’s new Andreessen Horowitz fund; and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Though, really they should have seen this coming. After all, Skype and Joltid have been sparring since earlier this year.

From an eBay Securities and Exchange Commission filing earlier this year:

As previously disclosed, Skype has been in a dispute with the licensor of certain key technologies and had terminated a “standstill” agreement that had been entered into between the parties, permitting either to take action against the other with effect from March 2009. On March 12, 2009, Skype Technologies S.A. filed a claim in the English High Court of Justice (No. HC09C00756) against Joltid Limited, a BVI company.

In connection with the license agreement between the two companies, Skype licenses peer-to-peer communication technology from Joltid, and Joltid has claimed that Skype has breached the terms of the license agreement. Following the filing of the claim, Joltid purported to terminate the license agreement. In particular, Joltid has alleged that Skype should not possess, use or modify certain software code (the “Code”) and that, by doing so, and by disclosing the Code in certain U.S. patent cases, pursuant to orders from U.S. courts, it has breached the license agreement.

On the basis of, among other things, the parties’ mutual dealings since the execution of the licence agreement, Skype is asking the English High Court for declaratory relief, including findings that:

(i) Skype is lawfully accessing, in possession of, using and modifying the Code so that Skype is not in breach of the license agreement with Joltid and accordingly Joltid’s notice of breach and subsequent notice of termination are invalid;

(ii) Skype lawfully disclosed the Code in the U.S. patent cases so that Skype is not in breach of the license agreement with Joltid and accordingly Joltid’s notice of breach and subsequent notice of termination are invalid; and

(iii) Joltid has certain indemnity obligations in relation to the U.S. patent proceedings.

Although Skype is confident of its legal position, as with any litigation there is the possibility of an adverse result if the matter is not resolved through negotiation. In such event, Skype would be adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely not be possible.

Perhaps this is why we saw so few bidders for Skype?

Ancient history, I suppose. But perhaps worth thinking about in light of OpenTable’s rather astonishing IPO last week. Originally priced at between $12 and $14, shares in the company were instead listed at $20. They opened at $24.50 and then spiked to $33 before closing at $31.81. A 59 percent surge on the first day of trading. For a company whose business is built on the recession-brutalized fine-dining industry? Impressive. Must have made for quite a windfall for OpenTable’s’s larger investors. Especially those who took the opportunity to dump their stakes in the company. Charles Schwab (SCHW), Pacific Asset Partners, W Capital Partners, Venture Frogs, Zagat and a number of small private investors sold off all their OpenTable shares as part of the company’s IPO (click on chart below), according to the SEC filing.

Interesting, yeah? Seems at least some of the company’s investors had been hoping for an exit. And they fled for it in unison, pockets full, when one was offered. Perhaps they’d lost their appetite for risk after reading through the Risk Factors section of Open Tables IPO filing, which grimly noted that “a significant majority of our restaurant customers are fine-dining restaurants which have been particularly affected by economic downturns such as the one we are currently experiencing.”

Or perhaps, like Scott Sweet, a senior managing partner at I.P.O. Boutique, they remember Foodline and the last dot-com bubble and bust. “People don’t truly know the story here about this company. It’s a one-trick pony company,” Sweet told the New York Times. “Pricier restaurants in San Francisco, Tampa, New York are not that hard to get in right now. In fact, one can do it themselves if they choose, with 15 minutes notice.”

“We do not intend to file for bankruptcy….We have lots of plans to grow our business.”

– Blockbuster spokesperson Karen Raskopf, March 3, 2009

Blockbuster in a Monday filing told the Securities and Exchange Commission what anyone who’s observed its fast-declining fortunes has known for some time now: The company isn’t sure it can stay in business much longer. In a PricewaterhouseCoopers assessment included as part of its latest 10-K, Blockbuster (BBI) acknowledged that its financial situation raises “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern” and said it may have to close its doors if its financial situation doesn’t improve in the near future. Seems that $250 million revolving loan Blockbuster announced last week is conditional, and the video rental chain says there is “no assurance” that it can meet its requirements.

An unfortunate turn of events for Blockbuster, but far from an unexpected one. The company did not fare well in its battle against DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix (NFLX), and its recent efforts to stay relevant have been head-shakers at best. A $1.3 billion gambit for an electronics chain that would go bankrupt less than a year later? A weak (and costly) set-top box offering that would later be made redundant by a deal with TiVo (TIVO)? A vending-machine program with partner NCR (NCR) that, like its entry into the DVD-by-mail market is late to a game it’s already losing? And all these things conceived and launched amid a challenging macroeconomic environment and constrained capital markets. Sad, really. Hard to imagine that 10 years ago Reed Hastings was doing all that he could to convince Blockbuster to buy Netflix…

Sadly for Otellini, that’s not likely to be the case. Sources close to the company tell Bloomberg that IBM is knee-deep in talks to acquire Sun and that a deal may be announced as soon as next week.

Looks like Sue was right, and the road to which he referred was a short one. The struggling telecom company has hired counsel to explore a bankruptcy filing, The Wall Street Journal reports. Nortel, well aware what such reports can do to investor confidence, insists that no such filing is imminent. The company does, however, acknowledge that it has engaged advisers to help it weather the current economic storm. Just who has Nortel hired? Word on the street says Lazard Ltd. and law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

Grim news for Nortel, which has spent the past several years trying to recover from the general downturn in the telecom industry and a nasty accounting scandal. With apparently very little success.

In a statement Wednesday, the company said, “Nortel is hard at work reshaping the business to even better serve our customers. There are those who fuel negative speculation, but there are many more who believe that Nortel has put in place the necessary plans to strengthen our financial footing and reset our cost base.”

Sounds intriguing, yeah? So what it is it?

Chowdhry hasn’t the faintest idea. But he speculates that it will involve chips developed by P.A. Semi, the boutique semiconductor design company Apple acquired last April. A clearer picture of what’s in store for us will emerge in early 2009 with a series of new Apple patent filings says Chowdhry, who contends that a P.A. Semi chip has also been designed into the third-generation iPhone–which will boast vastly improved performance and battery life over its predecessor.

In a regulatory filing urging shareholders to vote for its incumbent board of directors at the upcoming annual meeting, Yahoo (YHOO)
characterized Microsoft’s (MSFT) position throughout the two companies’ acquisition talks as “unresponsive and inconsistent.”

Which is ironic, because the same can be said of Yahoo’s turnaround strategy and its share price as well. Yahoo’s shares were trading at $19.18 the day before Microsoft announced its $31-per-share bid for the company. Six months later they’re trading at $19.65, not 50 cents from where they started.

“We know what Yahoo’s worth,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said back in April. “$44 billion is a lot of money. If Yahoo’s shareholders like it, that’s great. We are prepared to go forward without a merger with Yahoo. … Time is money.”

It certainly is.

According to a shareholder presentation the group filed with the SEC, Yahoo believes that “the record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition.”

The record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole-company transaction? Really? Are we all talking about the same record here? Because in the public one that I’ve been looking over, Microsoft sounds pretty damn committed. A few examples:

Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers.”

–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Feb. 1, 2008

Ad Age: If Yahoo comes back and says this isn’t enough money, would you borrow money or partner to make it happen?
Mehdi: Without a question, we are very committed to this combination. … We have a whole set of plans and preparations ready to go to make it work. And we’d like to do that in a cooperative way with Yahoo. No question–our commitment is clear with this one.”

–Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships, Feb. 11, 2008

If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo board.”

–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, April 5, 2008

I am disappointed that Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on Jan. 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62% premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.”

–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, May 3, 2008