It just seems to me the companies involved here would do best to use their time and resources to work on their code to prevent future incidents like this from occurring, instead of wasting them on litigation. Litigation tends to be a time and money consuming exploit, especially in international cases; not in the best interest of smaller companies.
There is always going to be code-theft, hacking, cracking, etc. Most software companies know this, and realize it is part of doing business. The companies would be best served to create methods of thwarting would-be culprits however, instead of sueing them after the fact.
I suspect a fair amount of saber-rattling as intimidation too here; a cheap and easy way to get a lot of the users to back down.
My analogy is say you owned a store that was robbed. Would you put money into sueing the guy who robbed you, or would you be better served by buying and installing security systems in your store to prevent that guy or the next guy from ripping you off again? If you sued the guy who robbed you, you might recoupe your initial losses, but you can almost bet there's another guy waiting in line to do the same thing to you.
In fact, I was robbed once myself. Someone stole a CD player out of my unlocked car in my garage. Sure it pissed me off, but instead of wasting time and energy chasing the culprits, I opted to prevent the next guy from doing it to me again. I cut my losses; wrote off the CD player, installed an alarm, and put in another CD player, and made sure my doors were locked. Since then I haven't had any problems.
It's a cruel world...
