<<To me it makes a lot of sense to fine companies that publish lies, and that is what the German law seems to do.>>

Obviously, it is a lot easier to get a preliminary injunction here in Germany than in the US. Here we have detailed regulations of what is allowed in competition (of companies) and what is not allowed. In the case of SCO this seems to work quite well.

Be warned though, that our "Wettbewerbsrecht" (laws regulating competition) have drawbacks too. They allow for their own sort of extortion schemes. Example: Lawyer teams up with little computer hardware reseller to threaten all other computer hardware resellers with injunctions for ridiculous offenses against the rules, like specifying a length in inches in an advertisement while in Germany cm would be normal. Notwithstanding the fact that in Germany too, nobody refers to the size of his computer screen in cm but only in inches.

These extortion schemes have been used on a regular basis for years and caused a lot of outrage in discussion boards over here. Just like the SCO case does now.