But why haven't they (IBM, RedHat, <insert other parties with vested interest in Linux) bought the "IP" from dead SCO/Oracle/whoever owned it last and buried this for good?
I'm assuming it's for precedent. SCO/Oracle/whoever doesn't actually own any "IP" being infringed on. It's a shakedown. The only "copied" code that's been shown in the last decade have been a few sections of a few header files for common APIs. IIRC, those are defined in specifications, but even if they weren't, any junior engineer would come up with a similar clean-room implementation from a set of man pages. If IBM rolled over and payed out money for this sort of dubious claim, that would open the door for everyone and their brother to make similar claims in the hope of a payoff.
I assume the lawyers are doing very well out of this.
Except for SCO's lawyers. I think SCO ran out of money and couldn't pay them.
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