Party #1 - Scientigo
Our first stop in looking at the history of Scientigo is to review who they are. Interestingly enough, the company just recently changed their name. OK, perhaps they did get that bit of strategy from The SCO Group - change your name as you commence your litigation strategy in hopes your past will not follow you. In this case, Scientigo was formerly known as Market Central. Their primary product appears to have been "SourceWare Search". According to one web site, this application:

is designed to find and effectively leverage information across the enterprise, whether contained in an Intranet, email, C drives, file servers, or in a database on the network.

Scientigo also recently acquired a "product" from Convey Systems, OnDemand CRM. From what I've been able to find so far, Convey Systems has ceased to exist as Convey, being swallowed up by Scientigo/Market Central. Convey was formerly a part of The TAG Group, Inc. Interestingly enough, TAG also appears to have ceased to exist (at least on the web - nothing at www.tagginc.com), though its other line of business, techumbrella is still alive.

The fact that both TAG and Convey Systems have apparently ceased to exist is probably related to the fact that the CEO of both of those companies, Doyal Bryant, was part of the deal when Market Central acquired Convey Systems. Mr. Bryant became the new CEO of Scientigo. Mr. Bryant has a background with several companies, mostly in the telecomm industry including ZTEL, Premiere Technologies, CommSouth, Talk.com, PrimeTec International, and ATMNet. It appears to me that this connection is most closely related to his role as a managing director with Emerging Technology Advisors, a firm that provided consulting services in the telecomm industry. For instance, in this article he is discussing prepaid dailtone services and we see Z-Tel's name pop up as well. It is through this background that we find out he is familiar with the concept of patent litigation. This is not the first time he has tried something like this - back in 1998 he was advising Marvin E. Marshall who claimed to hold patents on technology used by calling card companies. As you read the linked article, you can see how the strategy of submarine patents was alive and well back in the 1990's.

Party #2 - Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox
The second party to look at is the law firm of Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox. They specialize in a variety of areas, including intellectual property. They are a very busy firm when it comes to filing patents. According to Scientigo's press release announcing their "dream team", the three individuals from SKGF involved with Scientigo are Rob Sterne, Michael Specht, and Don Featherstone. The bios for all of these individuals are available on the firm's web site. Looking at the info for Robert Sterne, you may note that he frequently partners with Michael Q. Lee, another member of the firm who wrote an article, A Long-Term View: Software Should Be Patentable in Europe in which he argues software patents encourage innovation. In particular, he tries to make an argument that software patents and open source can "co-exist".

Party #3 - Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati
The next firm retained by Scientigo to help with this scheme is Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati. The individuals involved include Trevor J. Chaplick and Michael I. Raschid. One thing I noted about Chaplick is that he once co-authored a paper with Sterne of SKGF, Why directors must take responsibility for intellectual property. WSGR has an interesting list of results of cases and clients they have worked with. I noted that they helped Diamond Multimedia in a suit against the RIAA in a case involving Rio mp3 players.

Party #4 - Inflexion Point Strategy
The final element to add to this mix is Inflexion Point Strategy, which describes itself as an "IP investment bank". The firm is run by Ron Laurie, a consultant and attorney who has, among other things, taught courses at Stanford and U.C. Berkeley. Going through his site, he has an extensive history with tech companies and a variety of deals.

Conclusions - stock scam in the making?
So where is Scientigo heading with this move? Besides the obvious - trying to submarine their way to MONEY! In initial reports, Scientigo CEO Bryant specifically mentions Amazon as an example of a company that may owe royalties if this scheme succeeds. The question I wonder about is "why Amazon?" Could this be some type of attempt to target A9, Amazon's new search service? Or perhaps Amazon may serve as a "test" for them to go after any company storing product data using XML?

Another likely theory is "stock scam". I ran across a report by Ron Struthers, who operates playstocks.net, in which he was really talking up Scientigo back in March 2005. As he explains, there is big potential for someone to capitalize on search engines and he apparently thinks Scientigo has just the right "technology" to do that or as he puts it, they could be the "next big thing in search technology." The parallels with SCO are almost humorous -

• "potential to make $50 for every $1 invested if" according to Struthers
• a bunch of interrelated (nee incestous?) relationships between companies
• changing the name
• a stock with

  the potential to obtain a market cap of several $billion instead of the miniscule $14 million currently"

• a CEO who just made a presentation about PIPE deals