The story about ZL Technologies suing Gartner is finally being picked up by the mainstream tech media. Paul McNamara at NetworkWorld had a thorough piece yesterday, including four PDFs of court documents, for those of you at home eager to dive into all the gory details. I urge you read it.

Veteran analyst David Ferris has provided his keen insight on the subject here. As an industry analyst himself, David has some pertinent comments on this subject.

McNamara holds the same point of view that I expressed last month: ZL doesn’t have a leg to stand on because Gartner’s research reports are covered by First Amendment protections. Yes, we all know that Gartner has virtual monopoly power these days in the IT research area, but the fact remains that what they publish are subjective views on market segments and the vendors that serve them. And there’s still Forrester, Aberdeen, Yankee, Nemertes, Bloor and other smaller firms that buyers can turn to for opinions.

There’s a certain symmetry to the fact that this is taking place at the same time that SCO has fired their CEO, Darl McBride, he of the lamentable and endless lawsuits over who owns unix. As McNamara puts it in his story, “That's not a judgment request, it's an exit strategy.”