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SCO Fined in Munich For Linux Claims
nordi writes "heise.de reports (in German) that SCO Germany has to pay a fine of 10,000 Euros (~10,800 US$) because they kept on saying that Linux contains stolen intellectual property of SCO. In May a German court had decided that SCO Germany must not continue making those claims." Yes, it's auf Deutsch, so break out babelfish.
SCO Germany must pay 10,000 euro order money. Basis for the decision of the regional court Munich I is a provisional order of the enterprise Tarent and the LinuxTags against SCO. thereafter may not the enterprise not maintain, of Linux contains illegitimately acquired mental property of SCO. against it is to SCO on its homepage to have offended, why Tarent had requested an order procedure in June
The court accuses negligent behavior "according to a report of the Tarent GmbH SCO" with the enterprise of its firm homepage . There the statement is to have read be also after the provisional order that "final users, who use the software Linux for protection injuries of the mental property can be made liable by SCO".
Tarent lawyer Till hunter sees itself confirmed in the decision of the court that the statements of SCO as "substantial business-damaging expressions" are to be regarded, which concern a "extremely sensitive range". With unproven statements expense the expense third a business with the fear one make. With SCO Germany to time anybody for a statement cannot be attained; to request on a procedure stress Hans Bavarian, Managing director of SCO Germany, already beginning June opposite c't: "our intention was to hold back us conformal." The offence against the provisional order did not happen deliberately. ( anw
Or link to Babelfish and save us the trouble.
That's just a fine for non-compliance with a court order. Suing SCO over defamation or damaged business is a different matter - and something that is likely a lot easier with this fine as a background.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You were right if this fine was for messing around with the Linux community. This fine is only because SCO did not follow a preliminary injunction promptly. Certain statements were shown on sco.de *after* this injunction came into effect.
If you speak German, you might check out the original injunction (one of many) a this place here.
Once SCO has been sued, the amount does not matter. If the plaintiffs (I must RTFA) can enjoin SCO to stop their claims, and get the courts to set damages, each time SCO repeats their offense, they'll pay again.
Besides, I strongly suspect that a conviction in a German court will weigh heavily against SCO in other courts should this become a popular tactic.
Even a 1 EUR award would be a significant blow against SCO's position.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Please don't misunderstand this fine. This is not about the (doubtful) statements of SCO.
SCO GmbH in Germany was only fined because they did not fully comply with a preliminary injunction which told them not to repeat certain statements.
They are being fined for continuing to make claims, when the german courts said they must not until the case goes to course.
The are in violation of the injuction made against them spreading FUD while the case runs, which was brought about by linuxtag.
It's a little more complicated than what was stated. A Linux group sued SCO in a German court for an injunction to stop SCO from making its claims without proof. The Linux group probably wanted to see the alleged proof and thought that SCO would turn over it over once it was sued.
The fact that SCO has still refused to show its proof is pretty good evidence to me that they don't have any.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
English:2 1
. html
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=113
German:
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2003/5909
Please remember, this is not about the SCO case at all, but about false advertising. SCO was saying "linux users have to pay" even though this is an untested legal theory - it is for these misleading statements they now have to pay. If they later are proven to be right, they still made allegations out to be proven fact, which is a no-no in advertising, as far as Germany is concerned.
Bear in mind the order restraining them from making such claims is only a prelimenary injunction. That means all is still to play for, though the likelihood of a judgement against SCO Deutschland is very high indeed.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The Inquirer:
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
This fine has not been levied because SCO is lying.
The german LinuxTag is currently suing SCO german to forbid them to claim Linux contains illegal parts of Unix in Germany. As part of the procedure, a temporary injunction has been granted which orders SCO Germany not to use those claims until the matter is settled. SCO only failed to comply with this court order and has been fined for it.
Should LinuxTag lose the lawsuit, SCO can ask from them for damages resulting from the injucntion.
But in no way this has any relevance whether the claims by SCO are true or whether they're lying.
To make a short article shorter (and enlighten the German-impaired):
SCO Germany got fined 10,000 EUR because they transgressed against an injunction ordering them to remove from their web page any allegation that Linux contained ill-gotten IP of SCO's. Apparently they overlooked something when cleaning up their pages.
However, there was no judgment on whether or not these allegations are correct, so put the champagne back in the fridge, guys.
Basically, they have been told to "put up or shut up", and they did neither, hence the fine.
It does not mean that a court has found SCO is not telling the truth, it just means that if SCO want to continue making big statement, they need to accompanying evidence.
It has to be added that the sum that the court had deciced to charge against violation of the court decision was set to 250.000 Euros. The reason that it is only 10.000 Euros is that SCO "forgot" to remove all statements from their HTTPS server as well, thus not complying to the court decision. As this was only seen as a minor offense against the court decision, the sum was reduced.
> This German court has ordered the German division of SCO to stop making these claims. But what if the North American parent company continues making the claims? Is SCO Germany still liable?
Seems like you answered your own question to me.
Broker Recommendation: Strong Sell
http://biz.yahoo.com/z/a/s/scox.html
Regrettably not. SCO Inc and SCO GmbH are two different legal entities.
See my journal, I write things there
SCO Germany has to pay a 10000 Euro fine. This decision by the Landgericht Munchen I is based on a preliminary injunction against SCO, granted to the Tarent company and LinuxTag. According to it, SCO may not claim that Linux contains illegally obtained intellectual property from SCO. SCO has allegedly violated this on its homepage, therefore in June Tarent asked for a trial.
According to a Tarent GmbH statement, the court accuses SCO of "negligence" in running its company's homepage, which, even after the preliminary injunction allegedly read: "End users who use the Software Linux may be held liable for violations of SCO's intellectual property."
Tarent attorney Till Jaeger sees the court's decision as confirming that SCO's allegations are "massively business-damaging statements" concerning an "extremely sensitive issue." Unproven claims were used to do fear-induced business on the expense of others. SCO Germany is currently not available for comment. In early June, asked about the trial, SCO Germany CEO Hans Bayer emphasised: "Our intention was to comply." and that the violation of the preliminary incunction had not been intentional.
A search of qwestdex.com shows:
Mcbride Darl C
1799 E Vintage Oak Ln
Holladay UT 84121
(801) 424-2006
enjoy.
"Ordnungsgeld" will probably end up in the government's pockets.
Yes, probably, but they don't continue to make those claims. The preliminary injunction is only against "The SCO Group GmbH," i.e. the German subsidiary, not against the US parent company. I've just looked at SCO Group GmbH's web site, and not found any claims about Linux, information about their Linux licensing or anything like that.
The fine that SCO has to pay now is because after the injunction against them was issued, SCO took offline their German web site, but when they put it back online their "letter to Linux users" was still published on the HTTPS version of the web site. SCO claims that the continued publication was a mistake. That was in June, more information can be found in this article (German).
The court has now decided that SCO was negligent in operating their web server, that's why they have to pay the fine.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
As has been pointed out, they are not being fined for lying. They are being fined for making certain claims after being told by the court not to. And those claims haven't been determined as lies by the German court, but they have been determined as unsubstantiated. Basically if SCO doesn't try to prove their claims properly, they aren't allowed to make them, and fined if they do so.
Not really. There are laws against commercial disparagement in most of these United States and they have all passed constitutional muster. Commercial speech is subject to some constraints that political, artistic, journalistic and social speech are not because the objective of commercial speech is to make money whereas the purpose of most other forms of speech is to communicate facts and/or express ideas.
The reason SCO hasn't been hit with a preliminary injunction in the US is because nobody has asked for one. US courts like cases being "tried in the media" even less than European courts do.
utter rubbish
SCO reminds me of my brother and I fighting over something. Please mod me down, I'm a redundant, trolling, flamebait-loving dogmatist and I was a pro-DMCA lobbyist. They are claiming the whitespace. As soon as my crack legal team locates him, he will be sorry! I'd like my money back please.
This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.
SCO Germany has to pay a 10'000-Euro fine. The basis for this decision of the court of the district of Munich is a preliminary injunction of the company Tarent and Linuxtag against SCO, according to which the company [SCO] may not state that Linux contains illegally aqcuired intellectual property of SCO. SCO is supposed to have violated this ruling on its homepage, and Tarent had requested a ruling against this in June.
According to a communication of Tarent Ltd. the court accuses SCO of "negligent actions" regarding its corporate homepate. It's supposed to have contained - even after the preliminary injuction - the claim that "endusers who use the software linux can be held responsible for violating intellectual property of SCO".
Tarent's lawyer Till Jaeger is of the opinion that the courts decision confirms that the behaviour of SCO is "massively economically damaging" which concern a "very sensible area". Business with fear on the back of third parties is made with unproven statements, continues Jaeger. Nobody could be reached for comment at SCO Germany; when a ruling had been requested at the beginning of June, Hans Bayer, CEO of SCO Germany, said: "It was our intention to conform to the preliminary injunction". The violation of the preliminary injunction had not been intentional.
BS.
The U.S. has laws against lying to the public in order to damage the reputation of one's business competitors or to inflate one's stock price or any number of other things. In fact, one company, Red Hat, is taking advantage of said laws and has filed a court case against SCO in a U.S. court. Any number of other companies involved in Linux-related work could do the same.
Additionally, the German court didn't just decide one day to prohibit this speech. The injunction was the result of a lawsuit filed by private parties in Germany (LinuxTag, if I'm not mistaken), and the fine is for violating the court's order, not so much for the content of the speech.
I do not have a signature
Want to destroy SCO? Contribute to a Death of a thousand cuts by filing suit in small claims court. Only a 150,000 such suits should tap SCOX's market cap.
Logic is not Divine.
Translation by hand (mostly):
:P), so I hope there are not too many stupid mistakes in my translation.
SCO Germany has to pay a EUR 10,000 fine. This decision of the regional court of Munich I is based on [violation of] a provisional order of the enterprise Tarent and the LinuxTag against SCO. The order states SCO should cease making claims that Linux is violating SCO's Intellectual Property. It seems that SCO continued making such claims on their homepage, and therefore, in june Tarent asked the judge to impose a fine on them.
The court accused SCO of ignoring this order, because according to a report of Tarent, their homepage still contained statements such as "Linux end users can be held liable for infringement upon SCO's IP" - even after the provisional order was in effect.
Tarent's lawyer Till Jaeger is glad that the court has confirmed that SCO's expressions can be seen as "very damaging" to his company, especially because these claims have to do with very sensitive aspects of Linux development.
"These totally unproven claims cost other companies a lot of money, because people tend to get afraid (FUD)."
SCO can not be reached to comment on this matter.
In june, Managing Director Hans Bayer of SCO Germany said in an interview by C't [a well known and respected IT magazine in Germany and the Netherlands] that "his company intended to do exactly as the order stated. The violation was a mistake, it did not happen deliberately".
Disclaimer: Neither English nor German is my native tongue (and it shows
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Not to quit lying, the court order is more specific:
The court order is against claiming that Linux contains SCO intellectual property without presenting any evidence. SCO Germany now complies with that: www.sco.de doesn't mention IP concerns with Linux at all. They were fined 10000 Euros, because they overlooked a few files, which they removed a few days later. Only 10k Euros, because it was clearly an accident - they overlooked files accessible through https.
SCO Germany is free to turn around and claim IP infringement if (and only if) they include evidence.
Consumer rights. Ain't gonna happen.
In the EU, and even more so in north-western Europe, consumers have much more rights than in the US, and the proof of burden is typically on the companies and not the consumer. In this case, the company (SCO) made a claim against the consumer's rights, but could not, or could not yet provide a legal foundation for their claim. Thus the German court first gagged SCO from making the claims until/if they can back up the claims. It's not up to the consumers to prove that they're NOT liable -- it's up to SCO to prove that they are, and even WHO are liable.
The fine, on the other hand, was for SCO Germany not following the court order, and continuing to publish claims to the German consumers.
The fine makes no statement about whether the claims are true or false, but is a slap on the hand for not following the court injunction about not making unverified claims in public.
The US system is VERY different, and claims can be made not only under the protection of "free speech", but also because US property laws make it necessary to make the claims or lose the property.
Consumers are not a special protected group, and will have to fight their own battles and protect their own rights -- there's little government interference unless it interferes with more than just consumers rights.
Regards,
--
*Art
But it does make me wonder if perhaps the Babelfish in HHGTTG didn't actually work that well. Thanks to the fish, no one ever bothered to learn anyone else's languages, but how do they know it's an accurate translation? Maybe the fish doesn't do any better than our poor software-based fish, but the bad grammar was fixed by the character's brains/the editor. At least it's amusing to think of all the aliens communicating in babelfish-like translations.
:)
No, if you've read the book, you'd know that the fact the babelfish did in fact translate people's meaning and intent perfectly was why it led to larger wars and more violence than any other cause in history
Jay (=
google and babelfish translate some stuff wrong, but mine is far from perfect - due to my incompetence with judical english and the fact that it is really difficult to translate the complex german sentence structure into halfway-readable english.
(I tried nevertheless)
SCO Germany has to pay 10.000 EUR penalty fine.
This ruling of the district court Munich 1 is based on an interim injunction of the Tarent corporation and the "LinuxTag" organisation against SCO Germany.
Subsequently the company must not claim that linux would contain illegimate aquired intelectual property of SCO.
SCO ought to have infringed upon that on their homepage, wherefore Tarent had applyed for a "order law-suit???" in June.
According to a statement of the Tarent GmbH the court accuses SCO of "negligent behaviour" when operating their company-homepage.
There ought to have been readable the "End-users, who use the linux software could be hold liable for violations of intellectual property of SCO"-claim, even after the interim injunction against that.
Tarent-attorney Till Jaeger sees himself confirmed with this court decision,
that the claims of SCO are to be seen as "massive ???business-hurting??? expressions", which affect an "extremely sensible domain".
???With un-proven claims there would be made business at the expense of peoples fear.???
Nobody is reachable for a statement at SCO Germany right now.
Hans Bayer, CEO of SCO germany emphasized against c't (a computer magazine of heise.de) about the apply for an "order law-suit???" in early June:
"Our intention was, to act conform." and the approach against the interim injunction would not have been intentional. (anw/c't) (translation - Corvus)
Because SCO GmbH Germany was
a) not allowed to do so by order of SCO Inc.
b) SCO Inc. did not give SCO GmbH Germany these small pieces of evidence.
(yes, I spoke to the SCO GmbH Germany CEO, see other thread for details)
The first part of your statement is perfectly right. I just want to add that
1. There were many requests for an preliminary injunction, not just by LinuxTag (and they all succeeded)
2. In all cases SCO has to be read: SCO GmbH Germany.
Because it seems to jive with other evidence I've found that Germany has some very strict "thruth in advertising" laws. I've never had anyone confirm it (don't know any Germans) but it strongly seems to be the case.
I first noticed it with pro audio equipment. When a company quotes SNR stats at you about their pro sound card, it is almost always marketing BS. They quote you the SNR of the D/A or A/D converters themselves, not the effective SNR with all the supporting circutry taken into account. This is, of course, a more impressive number since the supporting circutry isn't perfect and degrades sound quality. This is accepted practise in the US, and is the same as chip companies quoting theortical Gflop numbers at you that you'll never see off of paper. Well, this isn't the case with any German card I've ever used. All the numbers are the no-bullshit, check-it-yourself, actul performance of the actual unit.
I suspect that's where this kind of injunction came from. LinuxTag said "They are lying about us in their ads (or offical company releases, same thing)" and the court said "Ok, SCO, you need to shut up until we have a hearing to determine the truth of your claims". SCO violated that order and is now in trouble for it.
Here it seems to more work that they can go around making claims UNTIL they are shown to be false, then they have to shut up.
SCO GmbH in Germany was only fined because they did not fully comply with a preliminary injunction which told them not to repeat certain statements.
Indeed. And they can be re-fined and the fines can be made higher if they repeat the statements again. They basically where fined because they disobeyed a court order. The original court order was issued because the judge(s) thought it likely that the claims SCO made where untrue and damaging to the competition.
SCO can use legal means to get the court order lifted, but then they would have to show proof for their claims, which, it seems, they cannot.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Hope I did better than the fish ...
SCO must pay a monetary fine
SCO Germany has to pay a fine of 10'000 Euro. The basis for this ruling of the district court Munich I is an injunction (trans: a rather loose translation of "einstweilige Verfgung", a German legal term, and IANAL) of both the Tarent company and the LinuxTag exposition. According to this injunction, SCO may not allege that Linux contains illegally acquired intellectual property of SCO. SCO apparently violated this injuction on their home page, and for this reason, Tarent filed for legal court proceedings.
According to a press release of Tarent GmbH, the court blamed SCO to have behaved negligently in the operation of their company home page. Even after the injunction, the accusation that "end users who use the software Linux, can be held accountable for violations of intellectual rights held by SCO" could be read on the home page.
Till Jaeger, the lawyer representing Tarent, sees the court ruling as a confirmation that SCO's claims have to be considered as "massively damaging to business", and that they concern a "very sensitive area". At the expense of other parties, Unproven allegations are used to make money out of fear. Nobody at SCO Germany was available for comment at present; regarding the filing of legal court proceedings, Hans Bayer, CEO of SCO Germany, told c't already in the beginning of June: "Our intention was to comply with the ruling." He claimed that the violation against the injunction had not been deliberate. (anw/c't)
This oversimplifies the case. First, even SCO FUD claims this is "not about copyright, but about licensing" between them and IBM. So either the article or the FUD is wrong. Probably both.
Also, this doesn't mention the concept of "public domain", of which the code they supposedly own is an implementation of such an algorithm. If the text is a copy/paste but the concept is directly school textbook, IANAL to determine how much value there is in their stuff anymore.
The details of the releases have been posted and reposted in the SCO news articles so often I tire of the discussion. Suffice it to say however, that SCO has to prove quite a large number of dubious claims before we get to this simplified concept of "code here...code here...pay up!"
Example:
The design of the System V code that they own is based on a legacy design that Linux also borrwed from. The four sections of kernel code that differ are possibly identical implementations of the same public concepts. IBM may or may not have injected the code into the tree, but BSD's implementation suggests Linux borrowed from this instead of SCO. BSD code is exempt due to the ATT fiasco predating SCO's Unixware. Also, the modules can be built in *almost identical* fashion by reading any grad-level OS text book sold readily at your local campus of higher education.
SCO sits on very shakey ground when making any claim that Linux has valuable components that would not exist without their effort, created or bought. And also (as has been said) SCO itself cannot survive without the efforts of BSD and Linux being integrated into their own products. The irony is scathing. The SCO convention was full of statements that made your head spin about the GPL (its good, its bad, its not how we do business, its what we rely on, it make code worthless, it how we recommend developing)
mug
Actually, IIRC, SCO didn't defend itself against the injunction in the German court so the injunction was issued not on the basis of probability of the claims being true but by default. This was a political move by SCO because they would have had to provide proof to the German court and they chose to concentrate on the trial in the US instead.
WHY they got this fine is because they said things that they did not substantiate. They were under orders NOT to do that. They were punished for asserting things without the needed prove. Without knowing their "prove" we do not know if it is accurate or assertions of dubious value.
Thanks,
Gerard