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SCO Caps Legal Expenses At $31 Million
uniqueCondition points to a story on News.com, writing "With SCO's legal costs reaching $7.3 million in their most recent quarter, nearly half of the $15 million it has spent in the last five quarters, SCO can't afford this kind of litigation. They have therefore limited their payment to $31 million for the entire case and is giving their legal team a larger slice of any settlement SCO achieves. Under the current agreement, the firm's contingency payment is 20 percent of a settlement. Under the new agreement, that increases to a range of 20 to 33 percent." uniqueCondition links also to coverage at Techrepublic.com, InformationWeek and The Inquirer.
I'd say that their legal team would probably bail under this new contract (given that they probably don't expect to win), but then I read the "capped" number. 31 million dollars?!? Isn't that a bit like capping baseball players? i.e. They already make so much money that the cap doesn't matter in many ways other than principle.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
of total annihilation?
Sounds like a sound investment to me!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
What I want to know is: who is paying them 660K in sco source licensing reveunue last quarter? Did Microsoft make another payment, did they recategorize other income into that program; what's the deal? It can't possibly be real income.
I kinda wish I was a SCO lawyer. They're making phat bank and they must know it's all going to fall apart in the end. They'll walk away with pockets full of cash and they won't be liable for anything I bet. (IANAL)
Might as well invest in losing lottery tickets.
And it's not even *all* of the nothing. What a gyp.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
A bigger slice of nothing is still nothing.
Reminds me of fly by night dot-bomb executives trying to appease their employees by giving them tantalizing (restricted) stock options.
Then pumping, dumping, and running like hell.
To blog is sublime
Judge: You may go ahead with your closing statement.
SCO: Yes, Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a case about intellec... (looks at watch abruptly) Oh, sorry, I guess the fund ran out just now. Another day, another trial. (Picks up briefcase, then bolts.)
As someone pointed out over at groklaw, 31 million is almost exactly all SCO is now worth in reserves, assets, etc. Team Boise ain't exactly sacrificing much here.
Everyone talks about SCO running a sleazy poorly executed shakedown (I agree), but I'm wondering if Boise and Crew have just shown us how to run a sleazy *brilliantly* executed shakedown - of SCO.
And from reviewing all the filings, it's clear Boise et al weren't exactly working overtime with their best and brightest in putting the case together.
Boise: "Hey look, it's a moron with tons of money. Let's string him along and see where it takes us."
The would-be con men have been conned, and damn well I'd say.
Does anyone know why after making a post, your IP is contacted by a Slashdot-server (in my case 66.35.250.150), which makes a "GET /" request, and on success further requests to the links in the directory-index.
Try it: post something, then watch your access_log.
No, money down!
/I move for a bad... court... thingy.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Does this means that if the judge "settles" that Darl spends his next 10 years in jail, he actually gets 4 years, and the lawyers get 6 years?
Sounds good to me...
well they have to still have some of that nothing to give to their stock holders in the end
When they spend all $31 Million and a settlement is still not coming what will the lawyers do then? I highly doubt they are going to keep working. My bet is the second that $31 mil is gone the lawyers are going to walk away and watch the company die. Perhaps SCO just dictated how and when it will fall.
I think every slashdotter should chip in $100, and WE buy SCO!
Do lawfirms have stock? I want to buy stock in SCO's legal representatives. They are certainly having a banner year. And then I want to sell that stock as soon as the last legal fee payment has been made by SCO. At that point, I expect they won't really have a great reputation in the legal community; so they won't be in much demand as lawyers after this case has been decided. I mean, who wants to hire a lawfirm that has a reputation for tying up the courts with a nonsense case, just to bill their client into bankruptcy?
And before you ask... no, I'm not an idiot. I just like piling absurd "what if's" onto our sometimes absurd reality.
Astronauts in weightlessness of pixilated space, exchange graffiti with a disembodied race. - Rush
Imagine what $31 million dollars could have done had they given it to various open source projects. Money in this world could really be put to better use.
Then SCO has to fend off Novell, RedHat and Autozone on any counterclaims they may have. Then they all could sue SCO for slander of title, abuse of process. If the GPL holds up in court, everyone that has code in Linux (including IBM, SUSE, RedHat, etc) could sue for damages. The only winners for SCO are the execs that have cashed out. But the SEC is looking into that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Saving face?
SCO: Hello Mr. Lawyer, will you take on our surefire case against Linux?
Lawyer: Surefire? Ha ha... *ahem*
(SCO hands lawyer large wad of cash)
Lawyer: Of course I will, my good man.
Many large wads of cash later:-
SCO: Mr. Lawyer, we cannot afford to pay you any more. Will you continue the battle if we divide the spoils with you?
Lawyer: What spoils?
SCO: When we win our case
Lawyer: Win? Have you been smoking crack again?
SCO: We paid you all that money.... please go along with this.
Lawyer: We'll *continue* to go along with this if you pay us more money. Why do you think we took this on in the first place?
SCO: Do you work for magic beans?
Lawyer: No, fuck off.
Press release issued where Darl McBride mentions something about "focusing on our core business of selling Unix". Everyone laughs.
They still believe they can win and are in the right... I live in Provo UT (student at BYU; yes yes I know crazy mormons blah blah blah, i totally agree)... Anyways I go to the same church ward as Ralph Yarro (Chairman of the Board of SCO, and CEO of Canopy Group)... Every Sunday I love to slam Ralphie with questions about what's going on on the SCO Titanic... He tells me over and over that they (SCO) have the moral highground and are in the right... He also says that in his heart of hearts he believes they will win the lawsuite against IBM... And after a win against IBM, he thinks the lawsuites like the ones against Chysler and AutoZone, will all just start to drop in... Whatever crack that guy's smokin'... I want some...
Just to show my age...
The first thing that popped into my mind was an episode of the Muppett Show I was when I was but a wee lad.
Fozzee Bear wanted a raise and brought in his agent (a rat) to negotiate w/Kermit the Frog. Kermit worked the rat into a frenzy (100% raise...no, 200%...no, 300%!) getting everyone all hype.
Then Kermit left and the rat asked Fozzee what he made before. $0. The rat was, well now you get 300% of that! And remember, I get 30% of THAT!
Sad.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
SCO Halted.
Please reboot underhanded business practices, or better yet, install Linux.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Other issues that are relevant. The above figures are a month old and last quarter SCOG was burning about 2.4 million a month in legal fees. Also, outstanding legal fees that had not yet been paid as of 31st July were unclear.
Who is SCOG's auditor and will they need to insist that SCOG presents a truthful balance sheet? And when?
I find it pretty amazing that SCO has the cajones to believe that anybody would be interested in taking them over. I believe that their stock is as high as it is right now (if under $4 a share is high) only because SCO has been buying it's own stock. What do they own? They have some money in the bank, much of which they owe to their lawyers and to others; they also own a UNIX distribution that that people are not busting down the doors to buy. SCO seems to believe that they own the copyright to System V, Linux and UNIX in general; they may actually own some sort of rights to System V, but SCO's copyright claims are being contested by somed of the current owners. SCO has a number of pending lawsuits, and so far the verdicts in their lawsuits have been against them. Their anti-takeover defense is as useless as any of their other claims.
.. almost 18 hours ago. See this page.
As many have quipped here already, there isn't likely to be a settlement in this case. So assuming that the lawyers themselves are not stupid, this cap agreement would seem to indicate that SCO has not yet racked up $31M in billing charges. And again, if the lawyers are not stupid, they probably already know, perhaps better than anyone else, that there isn't going to be a settlement. So it seems likely that when the $31M cap is reached, the lawyers will bail out. There's probably some kind of contract clause that will allow them to do this. If one knows how much has been billed already and the rate of billing, then it is possible to estimate how long it will be before the lawyers bail given the cap.
It all sounds pretty slimy when you think about it. I mean, how many millions were made on the SCO share run-up for largely baseless litigation? And one can bet that the lawyers aren't taking a loss on this deal. So they all do okay. To borrow a Chinese expression, its a sharing pork world!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
The problem is that if IBM buys SCO, then every two-bit scammer will try the same thing (sue IBM hoping IBM will settle/buy them out). IBM knows this and is in the process of driving SCO into the ground to make an example of them.
In the long run, it is (far) cheaper for IBM to fight this case to the bitter end rather then trying to deal with hundreds of similar cases that could arise if IBM buys SCO.
Besides the point, it is not even clear that SCO owns anything at all. SCO claims to have the rights to sub-licence UNIX System V for Novel (its not clear if this agreement is still in effect, for various reasons). From this, SCO claims to have the rights to enforce licencing deals for Novell (via copyrights that may or may not have been transfered) And so on and so forth. With so many ambiguities, it would be sheer madness for IBM to buy SCO just to make the lawsuit go away.
Just so it's clear, the $31M cap does not include payments that have already been made; the "total" in "total legal costs" refers to the fact that the cap would apply to all the firms representing SCO, not just Boies, Schiller and Flexner.
This is all made a bit more complicated by the facts that SCO currently owes something like $8M in unpaid bills for legal services already rendered--which apparently is covered by the cap; that the detailed terms of the deal haven't been released yet; and that in fact the details haven't been agreed upon yet (so far there's only a signed letter of intent). But the bottom line, confirmed at yesterday's conference call, is that SCO currently has ~$43M of cash on its balance sheet, and that assuming their future legal expenses hit the cap, they have ~$12M left to run the rest of their business--roughly 4 months of operating expenses at last quarter's burn rate.
In other words, barring some last minute capital infusion, SCO will run out of cash well before they hit the spending cap--unless, of course, they plan on dropping the pretense of running a business outside of their lawsuits.
Through lawyers the courts Darl has mocked
Jail is where he will be locked
It will not be funny
When Darl's out of money
Then he'll pump more than just stock
It looks like they are planning to go on the road to spread their FUD:
http://www.sco.com/partners/city_to_city/2004/
It might be a good idea to organize groups of people to show up and voice some opposition. Handing out free GNU/Linux distros would be fun too!
They have therefore limited their payment to $31 million for the entire case and is giving their legal team a larger slice of any settlement SCO achieves. Under the current agreement, the firm's contingency payment is 20 percent of a settlement. Under the new agreement, that increases to a range of 20 to 33 percent.
But the way things are shaping up, any settlement between SCO and IBM is going to require SCO to pay large amounts of money to IBM in order to get IBM to drop the copyright infringement claims, the patent infringement claims, the Lanham Act claims, etc., because IBM's attorneys are quickly demolishing all of SCO's claims.
IMO, the lawyers should have to pony up 20% to 33% of *that* settlement. They should get a "slice" all right...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
At the end of FY 2003, SCO president McBride got a $755,000 bonus, more than triple his salary, for his excellent performance.
Please, IBM, oh please, BUY OUT SCO!!! *maniacal laughter*
And imagine what $800 billions dollars each year could have done had they given it to various peace and development projects. Money in this world could really be put to better use.
(And please consider that I know this sound like a trolling bait but please please:
- consider that my comment is related to the parent comment.
- I wasn't insulting someone or anything.
- Just thinking outside of the box, we are here to have a discussion after all. I am not affiliated in anyway with that website I just found it googling)
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Yes, IBM could have bought out SCO the day the lawsuit was started, and, in fact, they would have spent less to buy the company at that point than they've probably spent on legal fees in the case so far. But it's more than just the precedent involved here. SCO is claiming that IBM violated their contracts, and stole SCO's "intellectual property". They've threatened IBM's reputation and smeared their good name.
It may shock some of the cynics here, who think that businesses only ever care about maximizing the profit on each nickel that flies by, but IBM actually cares about their reputation. They care about it for good, solid business reasons, but they still care. They know something that MS has yet to learn - if your customers (and partners) feel they can trust you, they're going to be a lot more willing to do a lot more business with you. SCO has accused IBM of being untrustworthy, and that's not something IBM will take lying down.
This kind of thinking has got to be completely alien to Darl and Ralph, who are probably still in shock that their "buy me, buy me!" scheme didn't work. They may well have studied the odds, and found that IBM only fights a certain percentage of nuisance lawsuits (chosen at random), and figured their chances were pretty good. I don't think they realized that this was a case that IBM would never roll over for, because that kind of thinking (ethical) is not something they're equipped for.
They want to avoid people posting through open proxies since open proxies are the standard method of ban evasion by trolls. So I assume when you post, they do some quick checks to check for evidence your computer has any sort of open or web-based proxy on it.
I assume if they hit anything, they'll either block you from posting further, or just flag you as a potential "problem user" or something. I suppose the thing to do here would be set up an open proxy on your computer and then attempt to post from it, and see if antyhing happens.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
ERROR: divide by 0
Well here is evidence SCO knows its going to lose and the lawyers think they are going to win.
No, this is Darl's attempt to make you *think* that the lawyers think they're gonna win.
If you had a client on contingency, and you thought they were gonna lose, wouldn't you try to get a fixed amount of money out of them? That's what the $31M is for - it's in a reserved account that SCO can't touch until the case is over.
The "increase" in contingency is window dressing so that Darl can tell people that their lawyers think they'll win.
You can bet that Boies insisted on the $31M, and Darl insisted on the 33%.
If they have given the legal team an additional 13% from the settlement, we can easily calculate how high considers its probability of success to be.
If we estimate that the payment cap to the lawyers deprive them of... say $30 million, and they are trying to get $5bn from IBM settlement, they consider their chances to be:
$5bn * p = $30 million
=> p = 4.6%
http://codeandlife.com
Lawyers can and will work for free. It's called Pro Boner.
I know what I said...
Hold those law-weasels accountable for 20% of any damages IBM, Red Hat or others might be awarded in return salvos at SCO. That might teach lawyers to be a bit more selective about which idiotic cases they bring to the courts.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'