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.

Comments

GPL Infringement?

[tiny69]

34. The viability of SCO's product offerings has depended in large measure upon the efforts of the open-source community in enhancing products and making them compatible for use across multiple software and hardware platforms. Indeed, SCO incorporated certain code licensed pursuant to the GPL into its proprietary UNIX products. SCO has also relied on independent developers in the open-source community, such as Linus Torvalds, in order to release upgrades of SCO' s Linux-based products.

Is IBM suggesting that they have found out during discovery that SCO is infringing on the GPL?

They certainly are

[griblik]

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.

IBM's Lawyer's as friends?!?

[mykepredko]

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