While it's an established fact that Mike Dell tries to copy Steve Jobs's every move with a zeal attributable only to some form of serious chemical imbalance, the man isn't exactly Mr. Attention-To-Detail (as a passing examination of the fit and finish of Dell's products will likely attest). Accordingly, it's only natural when Mike misses a move every once in a while; nobody's perfect. It's just a bummer for Mike that forgetting to ape an Apple action occasionally leads to a court case and a potential loss of several million dollars. Who knew that screwing up at Follow-The-Leader could be so expensive?

Here's the thing: faithful viewer David Doyle forwarded us a Reuters article which reveals that Dell is being sued by six companies (including such bigwigs as Sony and Mitsubishi) for patent infringement. Apparently this all centers around MPEG-2, the compression method used in DVD video creation and playback, and which can't be done legally without licensing some 380 patents held by MPEG LA, a "limited liability company" comprised of the six plaintiffs "together with Columbia University and the City of New York." Dell isn't a licensee, but ships computers capable of DVD video playback anyway, which the plaintiffs allege is a big no-no. They're reportedly seeking "an award of unspecified damages," which AtAT sources are placing roughly in the neighborhood of "eighty kajillion dollars." Ouch! Imagine that on the quarterly balance sheet...

So how does this all come back to a slip-up in Mike's little obsession with All Things Steve? Well, apparently there are 330 entities licensing the MPEG-2 patent portfolio-- and one of them is none other than Apple Computer Inc. If only Mike hadn't missed that one little detail, he could have done the usual copycat thing and paid to use the MPEG-2 patents, too, and avoided this whole sorry mess. It's tragic, we know, but look at it this way: it's not like Apple hasn't been sued for patent infringement, too, so at least from that perspective, this misstep could still be interpreted as Dell following in Apple's footsteps. We imagine that makes Mike feel at least a little better about the whole thing.