Sue First, Team Up Later

As Pirate Bay looks to go the Napster route of turning legit, another formerly contentious Web site is making deals with The Man.  Last year, Redlasso was  sued (almost out of existence) by several media companies for their media-clipping services.  In April, one of those companies struck a deal with Redlasso to syndicate that company’s content.

Is this a new business model?  Was there another point in history where companies would form, perform some grey market service, get sued by larger companies for that service and then join forces with them?  Using lawsuits (or the threat of lawsuits) as a business tactic is nothing new, but it seems like using lawsuits as a kind of first date is.