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SCO Might Sue Linus for Patent Infringement?
An anonymous reader writes "[Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive stated] that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement." It's right at the end of the story and it's quite a statement.
I suggest counter-suing for defamation of character. Just how much is an international reputation worth? Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* would justice. -rick
What patents still exist that cover Unix? Don't they expire after 17 years? I don't think patents filed for "time sharing systems" or "virtual memory" in the seventies are still applicable. Besides, if this is valid, why are they not also suing everyone else? I know Sun licensed the Unix code to make Solaris, but did they license patent rights as well? What about FreeBSD? GAAHHH! How can SCO even claim that this nonsense is valid?
If SCO decides to actually sue Linus, I hope all the server companies (or atleast the big ones like IBM, Red Hat, Penguin Computing, etc.) will help with his legal costs. After all, he did give them a great product without them do all the R&D themselves.
All SCO has to prove is that portions of code that it licensed for AIX to IBM ended up being used in Linux. This is alot easier than you think. All it takes is ONE PROGRAMMER out of the thousands that contribute code to have done this, for the Linux camp to be screwed. Since no one is out there auditing Linux code looking for stuff like this - how hard do you think it is for one person out of thousands of developers to have done this?
Look at how much code already is shared between the various BSD and Linux flavours already. Kernel drivers often have huge chunks of code that are just copy and pasted from one flavour to the next.
BSD had the jump on Linux way back in the day but has less marketshare now because of the same BS that happened with the AT&T suit oh so long ago - and we ended up winning that suit!
Be wary. This issue is not as cut and dry as all you may seem to believe. If SCO can prove that one person messed up, Linux is screwed. All it takes is 1.
I think a 24% crash in SCOs stock price today shows what the market thinks of this news, and exactly how much Linus has to fear.
Although if I were Linus I wouldn't exactly take the market as my best legal opinion in the matter... IANAL and the M(arket) is sure as hell is NAL either.
The threat to get Linus is as hollow as the rest, no Judge will allow a suit to be brought when the ownership of the IP is in question
Like I said, IANAL, but I would have thought a judge would allow such a suit. After all isn't one of the principle functions of the civil court to decide exactly these sort of contract disputes?
given that Novell own a vast majority of the patents (832 unix and novell vs 117 Sco and Unix), according to the USPTO,
I don't believe the USPTO keeps track of changes of ownership of patent rights. Even if it did, this seems to be primarily a contract dispute not a patent one.
the fact that Novell have taken some time and obviously a lot of expensive Legal advice before making such a series of claims vis a vis the ownership of the Unix IP and seems willing to step in the way of SCOs legal bullets, I'd say SCO's battle to steal Linux from the community has just got infinitely more difficult.
I don't think so. It has got a little harder (hooray) but I don't think it has got that much worse. Even Novell's chief executive is quoted in the article as saying "We believe it unlikely that SCO can demonstrate that it has any ownership whatsoever in those copyrights" (my emphasis). That isn't the totally unequivocal statement I would have liked to hear.
Sailing over the event horizon
Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive stated] that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds,
Isn't that outright criminal?? That's quite close to a criminal taking an innocent bystander in a bank, and saying, give me all the money or this bystander gets it in the head. That's usually called hostage taking, and carries a charge of kidnapping. Whereas in the SCO case, (I'm paraphrasing) "People better start buying licenses from us, or we'll go after Linus" is called extortion or, as the case may be, blackmail. If SCO has legitimate claim to sue somebody, they should sue, but to use threats against someone to get some other person to do something is illegal. Good God SCO, WTF is up with you?? At first I was skeptical of you, then I was disgusted with you, earlier today I was laughing at you, now, Jesus H Christ man, you people are treading on some seriously thin legal ground. Are you sure you have any legal counsel?? Outright extortion attempts are liable to get you some serious jail time that even Microsoft couldn't buy you out of. Give up now, while you still have a chance to at least do time in "Club Fed" for SEC violations and lying about IP ownership, don't push it until you do serious time for criminal acts.......
Aww, what am I saying, keep it up you punks, then you can spend some "quality time" with felons who'll treat you like the bitch you are.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
I wonder what the spin doctor would have to say to your above post. That's some pretty damning empirical evidence that disconfirms everything he claimed.
This keeps getting better. I can't believe that something concerning intellectual property, UNIX and Linux, and websites full of people that like to debate the effectiveness of Python over Perl, can be this damned entertaining.
The Yahoo! Stock message boards are very active with major investors, partners and executives of each board's respective company. The SCOX board is reasonably active, but could use some of the strong, intelligent insight that is spread around slashdot on this subject.
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I think those of us that are so inclined should voice our support for Linux, Linus, Open-Source, etc... there as well as here. Let your voice be heard by the people that invest in SCO, run it and do business with it...
Hell, even the trolls can have fun there...
http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=l&b
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
You don't have to copy anything to infringe on a patent. I can infringe on the Unisys LZW patent by writing my own LZW code. All I have to do is use (whether by copying or by innocently reinventing) Terry Welch's algorithm during the next month in the USA.
Similarly, if Linus introduced into the kernel either his own code or code donated by someone else (IBM) that implements any algorithms for which SCO holds patents, even if the code in question comprises completely original implementations of those algorithms, then by redistributing the kernel without a license from SCO, Linus is infringing on SCO's patents.
Granted this is civil... but look at what Adobe and the US criminal justice system tried to pull off with Dimitris Sklyrov. IMHO these issues are related because the legal system is now being employed to harass and threaten programmers. Any one of us can be a target. 10 years ago we could pursue our careers with very little threat of a law suit. Today - if one has a success then the question becomes how many times over will we be sued.
The whole issue illustrates how fucking preposterous the US legal system has become and other countries are planning to follow suit. Of course we also have countries like Norway and the issue of the DeCSS and Joh Johanson and I have no idea what label should be stapled to this mess. It would be simpler to just take the lawyers involved out behind the barn and get rid of them! But the horrible thing is that the victims of this perverted system are expected to finance it. Next time you are in a courtroom ask yourself of all the people in there - which ones are not being paid?
Here we have a threat to sue an individual (Linus) because he used his own ideas... ideas that apparently an unrelated individual manages to patent in a country (USA) that the person (Linus) doesn't live in.
Then after this flight of stoopidity - people come forth and suggest they will donate to the defense fund. Of course - this simply subsidies the US lawyers who collectively created the problem in the first place.
The bottom line is that this is getting right fucking crasy! Somehow we need to figure out how to counter this.
There are two sets of laws here that are working against us. First is patent law which as it is currently implemented has the following consequences. 1) if you own a valid patent and a large company wants to use what you invented - they will simply claim your patent is invalid and bankrupt you in the courts. 2) if they own an invalid patent then you cannot afford to fight them in the courts. Thus - you cannot do your job. You cannot pusue your career. Here we have intellectual feudalism where the sherrif of cyber notingham tries to turn you into a peasant.
[read up on Leo Farinsworth if you doubt this - he invented television and died a broken man - bankrupt as well - because RCA fucked him over in the courts]
Then the second set of laws are in the same group as the DMCA where we sometimes face criminal charges because perhaps someone wants to play a CD or a DVD and does not want to use software from Microsoft to do it.
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Patents are only valuable to large companies and they are only valuable because they can be used to restrain trade. Given this - large companies pool their patents in a defacto free patent zone. Those on the inside are more or less protected and do not run the risk of litigation. Anyone on the outside is fair game. What a wonderful little oligopoly eh?
Maybe "we" need to start playing this game. Suppose we organised an Open Source Patent Association and paid a feee like $100 bux to join it. This would create a pool of funds whereby the "best" ideas in the open source community could be patented. All members of the association would recieve protection and access to any and all patents. Any closed source shop would be billed or face court action -or- have to pool their patents in order to join.
Since most of the great ideas are invented in the open source community - in short order this association might have a rather wicked sheaf of patents and this could be used to ensure that members of the open source community cannot become victims of bad faith litigation.
You don't have to copy anything to infringe on a patent.
However, if the alleged infringement occurs early enough in the patent term, it could be argued that the invention was probably obvious to anybody skilled in the art.
then by redistributing the kernel without a license from SCO
By distributing the Linux kernel under the GNU GPL, SCO granted an implied license to its patents to all recipients of SCO code.
Will I retire or break 10K?
After the judge laughs SCO out of the court, I've a few hundred more for the legal OFFENSE fund...
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
For those who have forgotten, Halloween VII was a leaked memo from MS dated Sep 2002. It was a survey report, discussing what types of FUD were most effective, and where FUD was backfiring. From this:
And later:
Barratry was a new term to me, so I looked it up.
According to Infospace.com (via opera dictionary lookup, handy feature that) it is:
1. fraud by a master or crew at the expense of the owners of the ship or its cargo.
2. the offense of frequently exciting and stirring up lawsuits and quarrels.
3. the purchase or sale of ecclesiastical preferments or of offices of state. Also,barretry.
Although the meaning in this context is #2. I suppose that since they are jumping headfirst into the middle of OS Holy Wars, #3 also suffices.
If Godzilla did not exist, man would have had to create him.