I’ll bet the scientists and technologists slaving away in the early days of DARPA and at CERN never realized the bonanza this new-fangled Internet thingee would bring: Yes, lawsuits.

Now, I understand that – after football and overeating – litigation is The American Pastime. Yet it seems that, even for Americans, the tech industry is lawsuit happy.

Maybe it’s just because I’m closer to this industry than others, but I doubt it: This is my third career, and my previous one was as a journalist for trade publications, where each new job required learning a new industry. And – as a journalist – litigation was, of course, something compelling to write about.

Yet I don’t recall the flurry of legal action like I see every day in the tech industry. What the hell is going on? Is it just that the concept of bits vs. atoms (digital delivery vs. packaged products) is disrupting established industries, is it the way the patent department hands out software patents – unheard of only a couple of decades ago – like they were spitting out candy from a Pez dispenser, or what?

Look at some of the high/low lights of recent days/months:

• Everyone is suing Microsoft, including the distasteful Eolas case.
• SCO is suing everyone – they’ve abandoned their mission as a software/services company and turned into a full-time litigation factory. On the flip side, others have sued (RedHat) or are considering litigation against SCO.
• The RIAA continues to file lawsuits againt file sharers, this time as “John Doe” cases.

And somehow I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I’m not a fan of this.