SCO Files Response To Demand For Evidence

The Welcome Rain writes "SCO has posted its notice of compliance with the court order of December 12, which required them to produce evidence. The document itself is brief, but refers to a sixty-page supplement which lists the offending lines, and asserts that it can find more when IBM produces some of the evidence demanded of them by SCO. Millions of lines on sixty pages? How silly."

Comments

Wait a minute

[helix400]

It says the supplement exceeds 60 pages. So we don't know the actual size.

On a side note, any legal reason why they would say "exceed 60 pages". Why not 50 pages, or 70 pages, or whatever?

More info and analysis on GROKLAW

[hcg50a]

Check this out.

Re:Question

[The Welcome Rain]

It means that a party's attorney is not licensed to practice law in the state in which the suit is filed, but is so licensed in another state, and the party would like this attorney to help represent them. I believe at least one attorney for each party must be licensed in that state, but others need not be.

Sounds like they won't meet the Judge's threshold

[Teahouse]

The judge was very specific in December. She demanded forthright and overwhelming examples of the offending code. She said she would not allow the case to move forward unless it was submitted. She further stated she would not compel IBM the task of providing all development and and beta data unless it was required to answer SCO's disclosure. 60 pages is not a sufficient brief to even outline the supposed infractions SCO is throwing about, let alone actual instances of IP theft! A divorce case can easily have a 200 page evidentiary outline! Unless there is more we aren't hearing about, there is a good chance this will not meet the court's demands and the case will be dismissed.

FYI, the full list of Interrogatories

[ThisIsAnExampleAccou]

FYI, here is a list of the Interrogatories that SCO was supposed to answer. From the looks of it, they did not answer number 10 or 11.

INTERROGATORY NO. 1: seeks specific identification of all alleged trade secrets and confidential or proprietary information that SCO alleges IBM misappropriated or misused. This information is requested by product, file and line of code.

INTERROGATORY NO. 2: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 2 seeks further identification of: (a) all persons who have or had rights to the same; (b) the nature and sources of SCO's rights in the same; and (c) efforts to maintain secrecy or confidentiality of the same.

INTERROGATORY NO. 3: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 3 seeks the identity of all persons to whom the same was disclosed and the details of such disclosure. In particular, this interrogatory seeks: (a) the date of disclosure; (b) the terms of disclosure; (c) the documents relating to disclosure; (d) all places where the trade secret and/or confidential or proprietary information may be found or accessed.

INTERROGATORY NO. 4: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 4 seeks information regarding each instance in which plaintiff alleges that IBM misappropriated or misused the same. In particular, this interrogatory seeks (a) the date of the alleged misuse or misappropriation; (b) the persons involved; c) the manner of misuse or misappropriation; and (d) the location of any method or code in any IBM product, Linux, open source or the public domain.

INTERROGATORY NO. 5: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 5 seeks identification of (a) all agreements relating thereto, and (b) all copyrights and patents relating thereto, including but not limited to the owners, licensors, licensees, assignors or assignees thereof.

INTERROGATORY NO. 6: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 6 seeks (a) the origin of the code or method, including where, when and by whom created; (b) all products in which the code or method is included or upon which it is based (in whole or in part).

INTERROGATORY NO. 7: seeks a description of each instance in which IBM allegedly engaged in unfair competition, including but not limited to: (a) the dates of such conduct, (b) the persons involved, and (c) the specific manner of unfair competition.

INTERROGATORY NO. 8: seeks the identification of all agreements with which IBM allegedly interfered, including but not limited to: (a) the date of interference, (b) the persons involved in the interference, (c) the manner of interference, (d) the actions (if any) IBM encouraged licensees to take, (e) the actions, if any, such licensees took as a result of IBM's inducement/encouragement, (f) the trade secret or proprietary information (if any) involved in the alleged interference.

INTERROGATORY NO. 9: seeks identification of all agreements that IBM has allegedly breached, including but not limited to: (a) the date of breach, (b) the persons involved, and (c) the specific manner of breach.

INTERROGATORY NO. 10: Separately, for each of plaintiff's claims for relief, please identify all persons (including but not limited to present or former employees of plaintiff or plaintiff's predecessors in interest) with knowledge relating to plaintiff's claims and contentions and the general nature of, or the categories of, facts known by each person.

INTERROGATORY No.11: Please identify all products ever marketed, sold or distributed by plaintiff or plaintiff's pred

Re:FYI, the full list of Interrogatories

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! If you're going to karma-whore, at least mention the source!

Re:supplement?

[The Welcome Rain]

Sadly, that was filed privately. We may not get to see it until the upcoming hearing.

Yes.

[mcc]

Yes.

SCO has made no secret in recent months that it hired high-profile attorney David Boies to spearhead its case against IBM, but the company's legal representation in Utah courts is also noteworthy. The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a representative for SCO confirmed Monday.

It's SCO that's using Small fonts, not IBM

[McSpew]

The sixty pages referred to in the original story are pages that SCO has promised to deliver to IBM when they get around to it.

Now, of course, the small font claim is something we shouldn't dismiss too lightly. SCO did originally try to meet its discovery obligations by providing IBM with something like 100 million lines of code printed out on paper.

Stowell - No examples of copyrighted

[Anonymous Coward]

Monday's response included no examples of copyright violations, Stowell said. "We've not introduced copyright infringement as part of our case with IBM. We've tried to make it clear that it's a contract issue." From http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/01/13/HNscosho wscode_1.html

Re:Files and line numbers may be sufficient

[Jason Earl]

Yes, but SCO was ordered to do more than specify lines of code. They were ordered to provide a huge pile of information for each and every alleged infraction. We may not have access to SCO's response, but we do have access to the questions that they were supposed to answer. Take a look at interrogatories 12 and 13, for example:

INTERROGATORY NO. 12: Please identify, with specificity (by file and line of code), (a) all source code and other material in Linux (including but not limited to the Linux kernel, any Linux operating sytem and any Linux distribution) to which plaintiff has rights; and (b) the nature of plaintiff's rights, including but not limited to whether and how the code or other material derives from UNIX.

INTERROGATORY NO. 13: For each line of code and other materials identified in response to Interrogatory No. 12, please state whether (a) IBM has infringed plaintiff's rights, and for any rights IBM is alleged to have infringed, describe in detail how IBM is alleged to have infringed plaintiff's rights; and (b) whether plaintiff has ever distributed code or other material or otherwise made it available to the public, as part of a Linux distribution or otherwise, and, if so, the circumstances under which it was distributed or otherwise made available, including but not limited to the product(s) in which it was distributed or made available, and the terms under which is was distributed or made available (such as under the GPL or any other license).

That is a lot of information to provide for "each line of code." I would bet that in many cases 60 pages wouldn't even be enough to correctly document one infraction. And there are 11 other interrogatories that deal with entirely different aspects of the case. Each of these interrogatories likewise required huge amounts of information to correctly answer their demands. Handing over 60 pages is like submitting a Hello World program written in bash when asked to code an ERP program. It's so ridiculous that you almost have to invent a new word to correctly describe it.

The funniest part of the whole thing is that SCO apparently has paid their lawyers millions of dollars for their supposed "legal advice."