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Report Claims SCO Intends to Charge IBM with Fraud
An anonymous reader writes "Now it gets interesting. According to this report, it looks as if SCO is preparing to accuse IBM of fraud, and has even opened up a web site to counter the runaway success of Groklaw. SCO's expensive attorneys Boies and Silver are apparently going to file a motion asking the court to unseal most of the documents that are currently under seal, in the hope that certain of IBM's e-mails will be seen by the outside world to tell a story about AIX, Dynix, and Project Monterey that implicates IBM in, well to be blunt, fraud. Groklaw is certain to have its own distinct view about this latest development of course."
They've got nothing, everything they do is getting thrown out of court, so they're going to try and blame IBM for that too. It will be nice to tell our grandchildren about this company named SCO that tried to profit off of others work.
The page says "Roll mouse over timeline icons to see summary of each document". So I did and nothing. Hmmmm. Well, let's see how it validates.
OH well.
Free XBox, PS2
I think SCO just likes to believe that if it could just advocate enough false statements then perhaps just by chance one of them will turn out to be true. I figure the chance of that is equivelent to one hundred monkeys tapping randomly on keyboards reconstructing all of linux source code with a covering letter to Darl telling him to politely drink a cup of Ricin. Simon.
The only one commiting fraud here is SCO. They are creating fraudulent lawsuits for no reason but to annoy IBM. Pretty soon SCO is gonna sue for wrongful death because IBM killed their company. I mean seriously, doesn't this kind of suit start to border on defamation? Shouldn't IBM have the ability to sue SCO for damages or at least to force them to stop all lawsuits?
...to see a summary of each document.
Doesn't work with either browser I have installed right now. For a company whose motto is The Power of Unix, apparently you need to run IE6 on Windows to actually use their website.
Just a minor correction. Their website, actually very well done for a law firm, can be found at www.boies-schiller.com.
As a side note, I'm a law student and Boies Schiller is an interesting firm. They are one of the three highest paying firms in the country, with a first year starting salary of 140,000 per year as opposed to 125,000 for the majority of large law firms. They are headquartered in Armonk, NY as opposed to New York, NY.
David Boies is the premier partner. He left another high powered firm, Cravath, to start his own firm (Cravath is strangely enough representing IBM in this case). Since then, some say that Boies Schiller has become the cult of David Boies (hyperbole). I think that both his sister and brother have high management positions in the firm.
Regardless, from what I hear, Boies is one of the best litigators in the country. Cravath has good litigators too. This case will be well argued - and that is a good thing.
The ibmlawsuit page on SCO's website is not new, but prior to this it hadn't been updated in a while. It didn't take more than five minutes for this story to Slashdot their server. Let's wait for SCO to cry "sco.com hacked by linux users AGAIN".
>Where is SCO getting all this money to pay lawyers?
By defrauding investors into believing SCOX had a solid case, when in fact they didn't. Lying through their teeth about "owning UNIX", lying about the pedigree of Linux, lying about everything.
Behind closed doors they pitched this as an "investment opportunity". They probably showed the investors the Berkley Packet Filter code, maybe some standard headers (elf.h, etc). "Look! This is a slam dunk! And there are millions of lines more of that in linux!"
Oh, they really sold this "Linux Lottery" good.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The story
at linuxworld
was very
difficult
to read
all the
way
through.
What
were
they
thinking?
bork bork bork!
Further, SCO has not helped itself by issuing numerous public statements that contradict their representations in court.
As far as Groklaw goes, as a lawyer I cannot emphasize enough how innovative and unique that website is. Sure, Pamela Jones has a distinct bias, but at least you know up front where she stands so you can evaluate her opinions accordingly. The real value of that site is the sheer comprehensiveness of the public statements and filings organized in its database. A resource like that would cost someone tens (or possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars to compile privately, and yet here it is offered to the public for free. It's like open source litigation, and I hope that Groklaw or sites like it continue in the future for other legal/political/social issues (software patents anyone?).
I think that these stories on SCO are so one-sided because after more than a year on this story, it has been thoroughly exposed to the point of ridicule. It's sort of the way that the public responds to other types of lawsuits that seem frivolous at first glance; it's possible that a seemingly frivolous lawsuit may have have merit, but that doesn't stop the public from being highly sceptical.
SCO's problem is that they decided (highly unwisely from a litigation viewpoint) to spin their action in the press. This is completely contrary to standard practice when it comes to lawsuits ("No comment, the matter is before the courts"). All of their ill-informed, contradictory and bombastic press quotes are coming back to haunt them, as you can be sure that IBM will use any prior inconsistent statement to cross-examine and impeach their evidence now.
That's pretty clear. Judge Kimball is clearly telling SCO's attorneys that they need to present unambiguous evidence of copying, and soon. He's hinting to SCO that unless they come up with something good, he's going to grant IBM's summary judgement motions. He's giving them one last chance to do so.
This is a U.S. District Court judge. He has many other cases, most of them criminal. Here's his court schedule for the week. Sentencing hearings, plea bargains, and a few civil cases. He's not there to listen to SCO's lawyers stall forever. Federal civil procedure doesn't allow that.