If the plaintiff cannot produce enough evidence to show that he has a reasonable chance of winning the case in court, the defendant can make a motion for summary judgement. If the judge thinks that carrying the proceeding to trial would clearly be a waste of court time, he can then throw the case out. How often does this happen, I wonder. Does "Can't produce licenses/disks for all installs" equal "enough evidence"? On a related note: Something that would then keep this in check (and a lot of other crap) would be more laws penalizing those who file frivolous lawsuites. :)

I can see it now, people suing other people claiming they were made stupid by a break-up or divorce. Or someone murders his wife and gets off by claiming she rejected him repeatedly; he couldn't help it.

There are other, more mundane scenarious that are imaginable. Time off work because you were dumped, talking a teacher into letting you re-take a test....

While I read the article, I didn't see a link to the actual study. The article itself didn't realy have any substance.