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SCO Files Suit Against Novell Over System V Ownership
nadamsieee writes "Yahoo! Finance is carrying a press release from SCO that details a new lawsuit against Novell for "Slander of Title". It looks like SCO has finally ditched their failing product line in favor of 24/7 litigation and PR work." To recap: Novell and SCO have a lengthy correspondence over the meaning of the contract between the two companies, Novell registers a claim with the U.S. copyright office over the code in dispute, SCO files this suit in response. Update: 01/20 23:04 GMT by M : SCO has placed their complaint (pdf) online.
Now, that's the pot calling the kettle "black".
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
Can a company sue another company for being plain stupid? I mean, SCO thought they were getting all of System V because they failed to grasp all of the ramifications of the contract they had with Novell. The only argument that they might have is the claim that Novell tricked them into a contract that they thought was more inclusive. From reading the correspondence, I don't think this is the case. It was just a matter of shear stupidity on SCO's part to agree to a contract under their assumption that it was more inclusive than it is.
Looking at the correspondence Novell's put up, and given that SCO has acknowledged paying Novell royalties for SysV recently, it's hard to see how they can be serious. We can only hope that the judge here doesn't allow McBride & Co. to drag out the disclosure process as they have in the IBM case.
SCO delenda est!
No doubt Novell will file a countersuit. In fact, from Novell's correspondence it looks like Novell was preparing to file a suit over non-compliance with the purchase agreement. Maybe SCO saw it coming, and decided it would be better publicity to file first. Not that such a tactic will do SCO any good in the long run.
> SCO will be in very hot water, because it could be seen as
> a violation of a court order.
But is there anything that can be done to SCO directly when it comes to violating a court order? What's the worst? a fine? the case is kicked out? They'll still keep suing and litigating and making press releases until there's no more money to do so, or they're forced to shut up about their claims by whatever part of the legal system can do so. So far they've played very close to the edge with respect to real legal action, and it's all been "we are going to sue" and "we have a licence ready to sell" and "you will need indemnification", but they haven't done more than that. So far, that's all press release, but it's a very effective way of spreading FUD, and they can keep that up for a long time.
The cynic in me believes that when January 23 comes around and SCO haven't fully complied with the court order, the judge will nevertheless grant them some leeway, and it'll be another few months until SCO has to again cough anything up. They'll keep up the press releases in the meantime, for sure.
Don't think pump up, think stall. I would bet that in light of the fact that the IP that they claim to own is in fact in dispute, that they file a motion to let them finish this second trial first. It has relevance to the trial and I think it would be hard for the judge to say no to such a request.
Meanwhile, they will be able to extor...er, persuade others to buy into that phantom ip litigation insurance and continue to pump up prices so that they can all sell their shares and get to the bahamas by next winter.
Hopefully Novell will file a motion to keep them from selling snake oi...er ip litigation insurance. Best of luck Novell. Make it quick please.
.. on SCO before now. From my reading of the asset purchase agreement(s), Novell retained certain rights over SCO, including the right to "undo" certain things that SCO might do to their licensees, e.g. SCO revokes IBM's license, Novell un-revokes it. I find it surprising that they have not been able to just pull the plug on SCO for all of their recent behaviour. It's a shame, but I'm sure that if they could have done, they would have.
What do the Boy Scouts of America have to do with this? I guess they could roast SCO over an open fire. Or even better, they could tie them up with a bunch of cool knots.
But filing suit against Novell actually makes the situation worse, rather than better. Before the suit, a Linux user could only point to the possiblility of SCO's ownership being contested as an argument. Now they can point to an actual suit on the issue. There's no way that SCO can possibly sue anyone else until their suit against Novell is concluded.
The only possible legal benefit I can see for SCO from this is a source of potential delay in their suit against IBM. If they can somehow argue that their suit against IBM should be continued eventually but that the ownership issue with Novell has to be cleared up first, they can get another indefinite delay. Since the IBM suit seems likely to run into trouble otherwise, and delay seems to be the name of SCO's game these days, that seems like the only short-term upside.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
projection (pr&-JEK-sh&n): The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Nonsense.
Redhat's claims have nothing to do with who owns the property rights to UNIX, and IBM's case is nearly at a close, and doesn't really hinge on whether or not SCO owns UNIX - they've gotten this far, they're surely not going to suspend the case until the Novell/SCO case builds up for a matter of months, etc.
As soon as one case concludes against SCO, SCO is pretty much done for. It doesn't really matter which one, and IBM's is the one that is closest to closure at the moment. Why not let it finish, instead of shutting it down?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
On Friday, SCO has to stand before a Utah court and justify their pathetic little 60-some page document as complying with a court order to come up with some real evidence.
And therein lies the rub.
Think about it - SCO knows that they're in shit, and that they're on the verge of having the suit thrown out.. so enter...
the obvious pump-n'-dump scheme
If you're running a stock scam, and the whole thing is based on a frivolous lawsuit, and that lawsuit is about to come to an end, what would you do?
Answer: do anything you can to keep the case in limbo - including filing another lawsuit and using that as an excuse to delay proceedings.
IBM's discovery demand listed all SCO-owned source code in Linux (whether it was put there with SCO's authorization or not.) Since Novell contests what SCO owns, SCO can now go to the court and say "we can't answer number 12, because the code in question is being contested under another suit."
My guess is that SCO will show up on Friday and ask for the case to be put on hold until their suit against Novell is settled.
They've shown themselves to be:
Copyright violators suing for copyright violation.
Contract violators suing for breach of contract.
Royalty stiffs (withheld payments from Novell) sending fraudulent invoices for royalties.
And now they're slanderers suing for slander. Though technically it's libel.
Shit!
/. himself regularly. Seriously.
Do not give SCO any idea's. Darl McBride reads
If anything would kill Linux raids surely would. Non techie VP's would not care what the outcome of the case is. All they know is the IT director who installed Linux needs to be fired.
Microsoft is funding SCO and they are a member of teh BSA. They could easily arrange something. It would not supprise me.
http://saveie6.com/
* Novell's false and misleading representations that it owns the UNIX
and UnixWare copyrights has caused SCO irreparable harm to its
copyrights, its business, and its reputation.
I thought they were doing a fine job of ruining it all by themselves.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Yeah, it sucks. The really scary thing is that this "system" works better than anything else that has been tried. Live with it.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Answer: do anything you can to keep the case in limbo - including filing another lawsuit and using that as an excuse to delay proceedings.
However, looking at the date of when the suit was filed, it is dated January 20, 2004... they were supposed to hand-over the code that "SCO owns" and code that was improperly included into Linux by IBM with specificity to the court by January 13, a full week before that suit was filed against Novell.
There is no excuse (if they actually know what the hell they own code-wise) that they couldn't obey the court order, and supply the information that was requested of them. Didn't SCO say all along that they had proof of code misappropriations by IBM into Linux? SCO was supposed to satisfy interrogatories 1, 2, 4, 12, and 13, which are [1]:
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. 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. 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).
[1] The above Interrogatories were taken from Groklaw
SCO knew all along, before the court date in December, that Novell was contesting the ownership of SVRX. This may be why Novell only filed copyright and not a suit against SCO, since they probably didn't want to ruin any chance of SCO being squashed in the January 23 hearing.
Either way, the Judge better hand SCO's ass to themselves for their conduct in this case, especially the dribble of an excuse that was given for not complying with the cort order. Hell, just throw the suit out of the window, and let SCO battle it out with Novell.
The Santa Cruz Operation paid $150M to Novell for Unixware, etc. Caldera paid $30M to SCO for these contracts, and SCO changed their name to Tarantella, and then Caldera changed their name to The SCO Group. Novell holds that The Santa Cruz Operation paid that money to become Novell's exclusive agent in selling Unixware, and related products. Caldera believes that they bought the copyrights. SCOldera is playing a name game here, hoping to muddle the issue further. They talk to the press as if Old SCO and New SCO are one and the same. They say incorrect things like they paid $150M to get the contracts, when they truth is they paid only $30M.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.