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Judge Slams SCO's Lack of Evidence
An anonymous reader writes "News.com has reported that the federal judge overseeing the SCO Group's suit against IBM has voiced loud skepticism about SCO's case. "Viewed against the backdrop of SCO's plethora of public statements concerning IBM's and others' infringement of SCO's purported copyrights to the Unix software, it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities," said U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball." Commentary available on Groklaw as well.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=SCOX
pre-trading says it's down 5%
The Judge is not doing what Jackson did. He is not talking to the media, he is writing this in his order. Where as Judge Jackson was having meetings with media people. So this is completely different.
SCO complained to the magistrate that they needed complete unfettered access to ALL versions of AIX and DYNIX. That is billions of lines of code.
The judge even doubts that SCO has any evidence and stated that quite bluntly in his decision.
As for efficient use of lawyer time read the history of this case. SCO has consistenly asked for and received delays. In my not so humble opinion SCO is trying to get bought out and IBM's NAZGULS are saying no we want your head on our stake.
Panic now, beat the rush!
Firstly, the judge can refuse to award costs, or can award them such that the winner pays all; if a big company tries a trick like you're suggesting, a judge will probably use this flexibility. Note that under a loser pays system, the judge has to explain why they didn't award costs, or awarded them in a "winner pays" fashion.
Secondly, if you've got a strong case, you can get a good lawyer to work for you for minimal expense; typically, they demand an up-front payment of £500-£1000 (maybe as much as $2500) to touch the case, but then works in the hope of winning the case and getting a big costs award (courts normally award your standard fee schedule, plus credit-card rate interest).
The result is that anyone faced with a case they are likely to lose is going to settle. Where it's genuinely unclear, the courts revert to pay your own costs, and where you have an abusive but technically victorious litigant, they still pay everyone's costs.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
It's a legal concept. In the introductory stages of the trial, which is where the trial is now, the plaintiff has to show that there is a real disupte over the facts of the case. An undisputed fact is one which both sides accept to be true, and for purposes of the case is assumed to be. A disputed fact is one which is to be decided by the trial. The judge is saying that SCO hasn't presented any information or evidence by which they can make a reasonable claim of copyright infringment.