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IBM Files For Declaratory Judgement In SCO Case
Some Bitch writes "IBM has filed for declaratory judgement in the SCO case. They want the court to declare that "IBM does not infringe, induce the infringement of or contribute to the infringement of any SCO copyright through its Linux activities, including its use, reproduction and improvement of Linux, and that some or all of SCO's purported copyrights in Unix are invalid and unenforceable.". If the judge grants the motion then SCO effectively has no case and the whole thing is over."
spafbnerf notes that "SCO has filed a motion for the patent infringement claim to be split into a separate case." fr0z adds a link to Groklaw's always-excellent coverage.
I just wonder what took IBM so long to go for this? Was it matter of timing or did they have to wait for other judgements to clear first?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Is it just me or are the SCO lawyers trying to drag this out as long as they possibly can. Talk about the lawyers staying on the payroll a long time. They are great lawyers at keeping on the payroll withough ever actually taking this anywhere.
Evolution or ID?
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Once SCO is fucking dead, we can get back to coding and building fun toys, and maybe some useful things too, with the Linux kernel, without this damn fiaSCO hanging over our heads. It would also be nice to see someone persue some sort of criminal investigation against the SCO execs, but I'm not holding my breath.
And even better would be Darl's head on a pike, but I don't think we do that sort of thing anymore, right? :)
disclaimer: no, I don't *really* want to see Mr. McBride dead, call off your snipers you crazy SOBs.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
In short, I don't think groklaw is giving us a very objective view of the situation.
While this may be true, I don't think there is any objective view on this case other than reading the actual filings. And as an attorney, I would expect you to reference not the commentary but the actual filings. If you did not, then I'm surprised.
very steep discounts offered by Microsoft
This statement is the true reason you have chosen Microsoft, IMHO. If you or your company's attorney had read the various filings, (as our attorneys have) then the lawsuit(s) would not enter into the decision making process.
These are intelligent, wealthy people, and they did not get that way by filing groundless lawsuits.
As the previous poster mentioned, you are new to this, aren't you? Perhaps you should read several recent cases revolving around technology intellectual property. The Rambus case would be a good starting point. I also contend (as many others do) that SCO's management never expected to have the court proceeding last this long. I suspect that the plan was to be purchased or to have the case settle of out of court.
While you may be an attorney, I have seen and heard IBM's attorneys Cravath. There are one of the best intellectual property firms in the US. If the Cravath attorneys believe that claims are meritless, then I would tend to believe them.
If the judge grants what IBM wants, the case will be over, SCO's stock price will have created much revenue for them, as did the investment by MS, Linux will have had doubt cast upon it needlessly, and there will have been no punishment for Darl.
I wish IBM would fight them in court, win, and countersue for further damages to prove the point.
There's a Good Thing that has happened as a result of the SCO saga to date:
the Linux development commmunity is now being a lot more careful about code re-use, attribution, credits, and licensing issues in redistributed packages.
According to the filing as read by me on groklaw, SCO's attempt to impose extra licensing requirements puts them in breach of GPL section 5, which terminates their right to distribute under section 4. (ianal, could have read it completely wrong)
IBM has IP in linux that they have only licensed under GPL. If SCO has no GPL rights, they have no right to distribute the code, and they're therefore infringing IBM's copyright.
Warning: May contain nuts
We have held off on adopting Linux...it is simply unreasonable to assume that SCO's case is completely baseless.
I'm sure it's not completely baseless. But, the premise of a flat world isn't completely baseless, either. What I've seen from SCO to prove their point has been rather sketchy. You are entitled to your own opinion and to make business decisions accordingly. And, yes, it would be a shame if cogent, pro-SCO analysis were artificially suppressed. Perhaps you could point out some of those posts.
But here's something to think about for the future.
If your company loses money by delaying a Linux migration primarily because of the SCO suit, you might want to collect together evidence leading to that decision.
Should it ever some to light that the SCO suit were frivilous and possibly motivated by some third party that stood to gain by deliberately supporting a frivilous suit, then your company and others might stand to make up some of the lost revenue for being deliberately misled as part of a broader conspiracy that might not be legal.
If you're an internal counsel for your company, pursuing redress might provide you with plenty of work.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
In light of that fact that SCO has dropped it's trade secrets claim over a month ago, I think this is much more important than you are saying.
I have some experience with the type of lawyers IBM hires as litigators in social situations - I was involved as a witness in a product conterfiting suit about ten years ago.
To make me feel at ease, here in Toronto they took me out to dinner (Shopsey's at Yonge and Front) followed by a show at Second City.
Over dinner, the conversation ranged over such fascinating topics as the low percentage of both Canadians and Americans that could name all the judges on the countries supreme court, the need for all engineers to have mandatory training in evidence collection, documenting and testifying, explanation of the correct terms to use in the deposition process, which of the firm's offices were best for aspiring new hires and how much BMWs cost in Canada.
During the show, one of the lawyers actually started taking notes, recording what he thought were inappropriately used registered statements in the show - during the intermission they debated on the differences between Canadian and US law and whether or not the useage would be legal in the US.
At the end of the evening, they were happy that they were able to "sneak in a few minutes" talking about business, as this would allow them to claim the evening expenses as well as the time spent over dinner and the show as billable hours.
All in all, I found it to be a pretty traumatic evening.
At no time did I get the feeling that these people were normal human beings. On a personal level, they can't function with normal human beings. On a professional level, they are more than competent and although they will bleed you dry.
But, if they are working for you, I'm sure they'll devote more than 100% of their waking hours to your case. So, I guess looking at it from this dimension, they are excellent friends to have.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
SCO does not have documents that "appear" to show an actual copyright transfer under any interpretation of the law. Superficially, to an observer ignorant of copyright requirements, the APA ammendment may appear just as you suggest.
What SCO does have are documents that specifically _deny_ copyright transfer, and then an ammendment that shows intent to transfer unspecified copyrights as needed. As Novell has said, copyright law requires that a copyright be transferred with specificity. There are absolutely no documents in SCO's possession that do this. According to the law, it takes more than intent to transfer a copyright.
Anyway, Novell can't just go and transfer System V copyrights because it is unclear who owns copyright on what. Is it BSD code? Is it public domain code? Is it 3rd party code? System V is a copyright minefield. This is probably why Novell explicitly did NOT transfer copyright, but attached a promise of copyright transfer based on specific needs.
Remember that Ransom Love, assuming he had System V copyrights at the time, noted that SCO couldn't open up Unix (other than ancient Unix, which was already effectively public domain); because SCO wasn't sure what 3rd party proprietary code was in there. So there was this talk of opening up System V, and back then, SCO seemed willing - but unable - to do it.
I guess that this is most likely the intent of the Novell ammendment to the APA: To only transfer a copyright once it has been cleared of any outside claims (remember USL vs. BSD in '92). Clearly Novell was open to copyright transfer to SCO, and very possibly that was the intent (over at Groklaw, PJ surmises that SCO might even have Novell witnesses willing to testify to this intent). However, as I mentioned, it takes more than intent and promise to satisfy the law.
But I agree: The SCO copyright dispute must be resolved before any declaratory judgement. My only issue is that SCO documents don't "appear" to show anything other than intent.
SCOX is at $8.40/share
tick.. tick.. tick..
From an article today on Businessweek
That's what this case is actually all about. SCOX was practically a penny-stock when this started. Darl had no idea how to get them out of that hole by innovating, so litigation gave the stockholders the stock bounce they needed and demanded.
Now, the stock is dropping again. A buddy of mine (who is a broker) told me that the bubble will burst at about $4.50. At that poing, the drop to under a dollar will be very fast. Once that happens, these cases will go away because SCO will either have to hold it's remaining money to find another way out (wow! you mean innovate and try some R & D?!?) or follow this rabbit into insolvency very quickly.
Once the stocks hit >$4, Darl's "strategy" will be considered a failure, and SCO will fire him and seek another company to buy them (for virtually nothing) or stagger on as a dying company maintaining a shrinking customer base of legacy-UNIX systems.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright