The SEC's insider trading case against Mark Cuban is proving to be quite different from the usual open and shut matters we've come to expect from the commission. As Jonathan Berr reported yesterday on DailyFinance, some major legal experts have defended Mark Cuban's insistence that he didn't qualify as an insider when engaged in the trades in question.

Worse news for the SEC: Cuban has taken the unusual step of suing the SEC for denying him proper access to documents that detail the SEC's allegations and evidence against him.

The breaking news is that the SEC is charging Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, with insider trading related to sales of shares in Mamma.com, Inc., now Copernic, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNIC). The entrepreneur billionaire allegedly dumped 600,000 shares in the Internet search engine company when he found out it was raising money by selling shares in a private offering. This information was not publicly known.

The SEC filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, saying that in June, 2004, Cuban was invited to participate in the stock offering after he agreed to keep the information confidential. Knowing the offering would be conducted at a discount, Cuban then sold his entire 6% ownership within a few hours after he learned about it. When the financing was announced the next day, the company's shares dropped more than 10% due to dilution concerns. Cuban thus avoided more than $750,000 in losses.

If these allegations are true, this is a classic case of insider trading. The public had no way of knowing the stock price would drop, while Cuban and other insiders did. The SEC release didn't mention what other insiders did, but it seems, for now at least, that only Cuban acted on the information.

I've had about all the news of corruption I can take. Of course, I don't mean to sound accusatory, or find Mark Cuban guilty before he has been properly tried, but it's just the timing of it. When the world is swirling into a global recession based on greed, and probably at least a little bit of corruption, these news items are definitely ones I can do without.

If you think it is hard to trade information like the release of OpenRide from AOL by trading the parent, you may be accurate. Time Warner (TWX) is a behemoth consisting of so many parts that it often gets difficult to trade the stock on each piece of news and you have to look for more of a general "good" grouping or "bad" groupiing of news on most days. But trading its partners and competitors is fair game when you see secondary and tertiary cause and effect.

Look no further than Mamma.com (NASDAQ:MAMA), trading up more than 30% at $1.86. Mamma's Copernic Desktop Search of Copernic Technologies is one of the search powers behind the new OpenRide.

What is odd is that an article from RedHerring.com was dated late Oct. 3, and the MAMA stock started to move a bit only late yesterday. Its average daily volume was only about 90,000 and yesterday it traded 448,100 shares. It closed up $0.20 to $1.36 yesterday, so it isn't exactly a huge stock and its market cap is now just over $25 million. Shares of MAMA have now crossed 1.25 million shares and it is up another 30% on the day (to $1.85 as of 11 a.m.). That $25 million market cap was only $16 million yesterday morning and it is so small that this may not even qualify as a micro-cap.

Mamma.com (MAMA) was one name that had been touted in the past after Mark Cuban briefly took a stake in the company, and sold for a quick profit. The have "The Mother of All Search Engines," as well as the Mamma Career Search and the Mamma Health search.

The company has a 52-week stock trading range of $0.86 to $5.15, so it isn't a name without volatility when it has news. Its September short interest was only listed as 92,987 shares.

If you compare the two services you will see the similarities.