I have worked in finance for more than 10 years, and there are certainly plenty of
distressed-investing hedge funds who would invest 100mm USD without necessarily understanding
too much about the IBM/Novell litigation. There are all sorts of ways to make money out of a
distressed investment, many of which are far from obvious to the regular person even if they
have some understanding of investing.
Its not a foregone conclusion that MS are behind this.