Are innovative software companies really a target for corporate predators?

Real life provides evidence that the story of "AntiTrust" may be closer to reality than most people want to believe.

In the movie "AntiTrust," Gary Winston (Tim Robbins) is a Bill Gates' evil-twin type of a guy. His standard line is, "This business is binary. You're either a one or a zero."

Winston is the epitome of geek chic. He even wears those oval-shaped billionaire glasses. His company NURV (Never Underestimate Radical Vision) has plans to wire the world with a new system-product called Synapse, in which all appliances, like cellphones, computers, handhelds, PCs and TVs, are inextricably wired together through a grid of 240 orbiting satellites. ("Synapse will unite the Global Village") The only problem? Winston can't hit his due date for the new system.

So he tries to recruit two twenty-something garage-band computer whizzes, Milo Hoffman (Ryan Phillippe) and Teddy Chin (Yee Jee Tso).