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SCO Slammed in Slander of Title Suit
SillySlashdotName writes "Judge Kimball has stated that The SCO Group has failed to meet the requirements of the law in its complaint against Novell and has dismissed the case but gives TSG 30 days to try to meet the legal requirements. More info on groklaw." EWeek also has a story.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Yes!!! Yes!!! SCO is going DOWN baby!!!
but gives TSG 30 days to try to meet the legal requirements.
Noooooooo!!!!!!! Arrrrgggghhhhhhhhh!!!! Don't give 'em any more time--they're going to use it to stretch this bullshit even longer!!!!
***
Ok, seriously now, I think that each of SCO's cases is going to get thrown out one-by-one, and when SCO has to start paying others' legal fees (I can't wait until they have to pay IBM's), they are going to disappear, without accomplishing what Microsoft wants them to accomplish, which is to screw the Linux community over. I think they will accomplish the exact opposite, which is giving lots and lots and lots of free advertising worldwide to Linux, and then when SCO loses all these cases, it will prove to the world that Linux is legitimate, and Microsoft will have screwed themselves over. Nanny nanny boo boo!!!
SCO in the NEWS
Recent SCO Headlines
News About The SCO Group
As far as SCO is concerned, only FUD like:
SCO beefs up user identity management, vnunet.com
Green Hills Sparks Embedded Linux Security Row, Computer Business Review Online
MoD opts for SCO identity system, vnunet.com
SCO Could Win: Week Two, eWeek.com
Red Hat's case against SCO put on hold, cnet news
IBM ordered to provide SCO with code, documents, ComputerWorld
SCO Should Win, eWeek.com
SCO wins Linux License payments, BBC News
SCO suits target two big Linux users, cnet news
Judge accepts expanded lawsuit, MSNBC
qualifies for their "News" page.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The Wheels of Justice do grind slowly, but they are grinding in the right direction. IBM, Novell, and all the Good Guys(tm) will eventually win. And then the countersuits will destroy SCO. Hopefully, the countersuits will destroy Darl. Also, we don't want the judge to make a mistake here. If he had thrown the case out, SCO would appeal it back in and things would take even longer. We want IBM/Novell/Good Guys(tm) to win fair and square. It is a clear cut case, they just need to make sure SCO can't claim they were beaten unfairly... because they will anyway. :)
They say you should never observe how sausage or laws are made. I wish to amend that to say you should never observe how laws are litigated.
What a shameful display of the american legal system when after a year and half all the court can say is "I'll grant you another extension and the trial won't be till september of 2005".
A five year old would have settled this a year ago.
evil is as evil does
...this is certainly a positive development. If we are lucky, this will be an indicator of things to come, as maybe this will snowball into an avalanche of failure for $Stupid_Cretinous_Organization.
The best aspect of this that I can gather is that is puts SCO firmly on the defensive.
SCO vs. IBM is just an attempt to re-try USL vs. Berkely. If SCO goes under before being hammered flat in the court system it'll be Wayland/Yutani vs. the Linux Developers Guild in 2013.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Hilarious.
[...]
Just go there and read it. I think the press is going to gang up on SCO and really kick them. What goes up, must come down.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
People have commented here that they can't understand why it's taken so long to come to this ruling with the facts so clear cut.
Just remember that it's easier for a person to prove they own something than prove that someone else doesn't own it. If SCO had a legal document showing clear ownership they could have had this wrapped up much faster. On the other hand, Novel is saying "We have these documents that do NOT show SCO ownership." which doesn't prove your side; it only disproves the other.
SCO might always find a previously unknown document showing clear copyright conveyance.
Just wait til SCO discovers that Microsoft's new HPC server uses technology from Linux (which according to SCO has illegal UNIX code in it) and then determines that Microsoft's UNIX license only covers the use of real UNIX and not UNIX illegally contributed to Linux and therefore Microsoft's use of Linux technologies to make their HPC server violates SCOs alleged copyrights. Once Microsoft starts making a profit from its HPC server, then SCO can sue them despite their UNIX license. Kind of circular, I know, but SCO isn't exactly known for using logic, common sense, and reason of late.
The Smoking Gun has 30 days to come up with something...and they always deliver.
Oh. Oh oh oh. The Sco Group...never mind!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
From a moral perspective, by borrowing shares now you'd be making money of the people who bet against Linux.
The Raven
Right now, the top 5 headlines listed are:
STREET WISE: Little Cheer for SCO Shareholders
SCO Group Posts Loss
SCO posts loss vs profit; revenue down 52 pct
SCO Group Stumbles on Revenue Drop
SCO Keeps Sinking
Now, a) companies have come back from way below where SCO is now b) crazy legal judgements may declare D. McBride Emperor of the U.S. without significantly decreasing the sanity level of the whole system c) it's not nice to be vindictive.
However, one of my favorite slogans is "Humble to the humble, unyielding to the arrogant." Darl falls into the second category to me, since he would like, on what seem to be wildly spurious suppositions and with dirty tactics worthy of Ayn Rand's slimiest villains, to take away the Free software I use every day.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Wow. SCO is so lucky that the stock market is closed today. With 2 bad news items hitting at once (this and the McDonalds story), the effect on their share price would be devastating. Still, Monday will not be a good trading day for them.
If you read the commentary buried somewhere deep on Groklaw and learn enough legalese to read between the lines, the judge hinted to Novell that a future motion for summary judgment might be in their best interests, indeed, he made it sound like a major summary judgment ruling would be forthcoming - if Novell requests it. And THAT could be the end of it.
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Something cleverBesides, the fact that the judge felt there was uncertainty of copyright transfer means that Novell couldn't have acted with malice. If Novell actually belived it had ownership then there is no slander of title.
Stock price graphs that look like that are fairly common; all companies have bad patches.
But it's not often that you see one where the origin of the graph is so close to zero. Usually it looks like a major dip in the price, but only because the scale is between 200 and 220 or something like that. But this graph actually goes right down to 4, from a peak of 20. That's serious bad news for any company.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Nope.
There are several things that must be shown for a slander of title to succeed. If any one of these are not proven, then the entire claim fails.
What the judge is saying is that even if all of the other elements of a slander of title were proven, SCO's inability to specify specific damages would certainly decide the case in Novell's favor. Thus, there is no need to hear the case at all. For SCO to prevail, they must show specific damages in addition to the other elements.
Therefore, even if SCO prevailed on all the other issues, they would still fail because they of the lack of specific damages.
Under normal circumstances, this decision would be a strong signal to the plaintiff that they should work out some kind of deal with the defendant.
So really, there are a few interesting angles here. Novell is claiming (persuasively, in my lay opinion) that the amended APA does not qualify as a transfer of copyright under federal rules, so TSG cannot own the copyright. But there's also the unsettled question of which copyrights Novell owned at the time the amendment was executed (I don't know whether Novell wants to go there), a question raised by the AT&T vs BSD action, as well as the question of a transfer executed from OldSCO to Caldera.
Also:
Kimball says: "not so fast, Novell. It's not OBVIOUS at all. Maybe APA-2 actually transferred the copyrights but MAYBE NOT. We're going to need a trial to figure that out. Since we're going to need a trial, I'm not going to dismiss the lawsuit on those grounds at this stage."
Kimball seems to hint fairly broadly that he agrees with Novell's interpretation that the amended APA is not an instrument of transfer. However, since this was a motion for dismissal, he has to look on everything favorably to SCO. It's entirely possible that a motion for summary judgement would go the other way.
In fact, I don't think it would be a huge shock if TSG took the hint and didn't refile. As it is, for all of Kimball's hints, he didn't rule on whether Novell or TSG holds the copyrights. If that ruling would go against TSG, it would sink their other litigation, so they might very well prefer to get out of this without getting their heads handed to them.
Judge Kimball says: "Novell's got a point. SCO, your legalese has syntax errors and fails to validate. I'm not saying your content is bogus, I'm saying your syntax is wrong. You have 30 days to re-format your lawsuit so that it's valid FRCP".
The problem is that TSG had to identify certain ways that Novell had hurt them and they failed to do so. It's a little more serious than simply bad syntax.
I think that this memorandum opinion is almost wholly procedural, and barely newsworthy. This was a motion to dismiss under rule 12, rather than a rule 56 summary judgment motion-- which would be a conclusion, as a matter of law, that there was no case. Rule 12 basically means that they didn't plead it right-- and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are exceedingly liberal when it comes to amended complaints. Novell almost certainly filed the Rule 12 motion because they didn't want to have to defend against a complaint as vague as SCO's. Unless SCO annoys the judge by not even making an attempt to plead special damages in the amended complaint, I suspect this case will last until summary judgment, which, knowing Federal scheduling, could be six months to a year away.
Why? Because there's a hell of a lot of leeway to amend-- all the pleading is is a basic outline of what the lawsuit is about. You can't make stuff up-- Rule 11 of the FRCP can bite you hard if you do (and I fully expect SCO to get hit by Rule 11 sanctions before the end of the case if their case is as weak as it appears)-- but a bright law student could come up with special damages in an amended complaint. It was just sloppiness or vagueness on the drafting lawyer's part-- special damages could relate to SCO's stock value, to the value of its UNIX assets, or to money lost in licensing fees. Get an accountant to estimate some numbers based on sales and licensing figures, sign an affidavit that they're good, and attach them to the complaint. All they have to do is say what they think they lost-- they'll still have to prove it later, which is the tricky part, but at this stage of the case, they just have to allege their damages with some particularity.
(I'm halfway convinced that the reason Novell wants this case in Federal court is Rule 11 of the FRCP. I don't know Utah law, but I highly doubt it's as harsh as the Feds are if you're caught making up evidence or telling lies to the court.)
(IAAL)