Slashdot Mirror
SCO Denied Motion To Change IBM Case Again
Rob writes "SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time
has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present
their respective evidence with specificity. Despite repeated public declarations
that it has evidence Linux contains Unix code that infringes its copyright, SCO
has yet to present any evidence to the court." Bad news for them all around, lately.
SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present their respective evidence with specificity. **snip** Bad news all around, lately.
Ok, why exactly is this bad news? Sounds like what we've all been screaming for. The judge finally says "put up or shut up - no more delays!"
Unless I'm reading it wrong. Am I?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I believe either the tags were left out, or the bad news is in referral to bad news for SCO, not bad news for Linux.
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world; unreasonable people persist in trying to adapt the world to themselves
No idea what it said before, but right now the "Bad news" links to the slashdot article where Novell's judge declined to kill the SCO vs. Novell lawsuit. So "Bad news all around" means that everyone's got their share of bad news no matter whose side you're on.
The cbronline.com article says the SCO/IBM case will drag out at least through February 2007! Does that sound excessive to anyone besides me?
/. will have plenty of future front page material.
I guess
SCOX is no longer a standard, retail-invested stock. The stock is EXCEEDINGLY lightly traded, likely only being held my insiders and investment houses, both scared what will happen to the stock if they unloaded.
Or... perhaps, they're saying. 'If I try to sell this, it'll plumment to near-zero solely on my measly holdings. I might as well just hang onto it just in case something interesting happens with the case'.
In short... this is NOT a normal stock anymore. I've given up keeping an eye on it and praying for its collapse. I'm neither long, nor short, but I simply don't want the insiders to make money on this. It'll probably hover around the $3.50-$4 mark right up until the company is liquidated.
I take heart in the fact that NOONE can offload any significant portion of this stock without it crashing.
Yes, but the valuation of the company depends upon its future earnings potential and the value of the stock relates to a fraction of that.
A company may have lots of assets, but if it is losing money such that its assets will soon be worthless and the management are not going to shut it down before bankruptsy, then the value of the assets matters little. All that matters is what cash shareholders can get from the company now or in the future.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"Bad news __for them__".
nuff said.
Dad is a Federal circuit court judge (former Chief Judge of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals) and my cousin is on the Michigan state bench. That's the Honorable David R. Hansen and the Honorable Katherine L. Hansen, respectively. Dad was appointed to the state bench in 1976 by the (Republican) Governor Robert Ray; he was appointed to the Federal bench for the District of Northern Iowa in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan; he was appointed to the appellate bench by President George H.W. Bush. Officially, Dad has no political party--he's not allowed to, as part of the Federal code of judicial ethics--but I think you can probably figure out from his appointment history that Teddy Kennedy doesn't send him Christmas cards.
My cousin Katherine, on the other hand, was appointed to the Michigan state bench by Governor Jennifer M. Granholm. Governor Granholm, as you are no doubt aware, is so far in the left wing of the Democratic Party that she was honored with floor time at the last National Convention. I'm not sure whether her judicial ethics allow her to have a party affiliation or not, but... you can draw your own conclusions.
Why does this matter? Because whether I look at a Federal judge repeatedly appointed by Republicans, or whether I look at a State judge appointed by a dyed-in-the-wool lefty Democrat, I see the same thing: namely, brother, you are wrong, and have no idea just how wrong you are.
Judges try very hard to be impartial in all hearings... impartial to the point of rudeness. If you step into court and claim that the sky is blue, both Dad and Katherine will interrupt you to ask whether you're going to introduce meterologic testimony into the record attesting to that fact. (Well, Katherine would probably have the good grace to wait until you were finished. Dad's approach is the kinder of the two, though; when Katherine quietly pulls the rug out from under your feet, thoroughly confounding the last ten minutes of your argument, you long for the rough kindness of an interruption.)
It makes it hell trying to have normal conversations with them, by the by; they have a very hard time disengaging from judicial-think. When I say that I think I did well on an exam, Dad wants to know precisely what evidence leads me to that conclusion. When I talk to Katherine and mention that I have a paper submitted to Black Hat 2005, Katherine doesn't say "that's nice"; she insists that I sit her down and teach her enough computational theory so that she can decide for herself my odds of getting published.
Both of them live and die by a mantra: neither one of them gives half a damn what you know, they only care what you can prove.
Nor are they "watchers" of the court in any sense. They are the administrators of the court. They're the ones who decide the ground rules of the court hearing. They decide these ground rules based on pleadings; attorneys for one side say that under one Supreme Court ruling, the standard for evidence should be this, while attorneys for the other side say that decision didn't foresee this particular eventuality and it should be discarded. Only a fool would claim they are "watchers". They are not combatants in the courtroom, in the sense of trial lawyers, no, but they are both the arbiters of fairness and the executors of decisions. If you're able to convince the judge of a fact, then brother, your job is done. At that point the other attorney isn't fighting you anymore, he's fighting the judge, and that's a fight the other lawyer is--with greater than 90% certainty--going to lose.
Impartiality is difficult to attain. The best solution judges have found, either on the Left or on the Right, is ruthless, r
It's not a "sometimes they're impartial".
And they're not "watchers".
And if you think either is true, then you don't understand the judiciary at all. Those are two glaring, egregious errors to make.
IBM didn't choose to limit their 9th counterclaim as you say, SCO took the counterclaim out of context.
When the lawsuit first started, SCO attempted to terminate IBM's Unix license which allowed IBM to distribute AIX. Novell stepped in and gave IBM the go-ahead to continue to distribute AIX, which they were specifically allowed to do, regardless of whether or not they own the copyrights, by the Asset Purchase Agreement between Novell and Santa Cruz Operation (not the same as The SCO Group, 2 different companies in-case someone here doesn't know that).
After SCO completed attempting to terminate the license, IBM continued to distribute AIX. SCO ammended their complaint to add a claim for copyright infringement because IBM was distributing AIX without a license (or so they claimed). They then notified IBM customers that they could be liable for using AIX.
IBM then filed a counter-suit against SCO (their 9th claim) that IBM wasn't infringing SCO's alledged copyrights by continuing to distribute AIX.
SCO, when trying to ammed this complaint now, argued that it should be allowed to because IBM's counter-claim dealt with whether IBM ever had a license to use Unix SVR4 code on the Power Arch. in AIX.
This WAS NOT IBM's intention when filing the counter-claim. They were merely trying to prove that SCO hadn't legally terminated their AIX license, not that they had a right to Unix SVR4 code. SCO purposefully took this out of context to try to slide their new amended complaint through.
So, in-fact, IBM's request to limit its 9th counterclaim wasn't actually changing the claim, but to just clarify its scope and to show that SCO was taking it out of context.
And this is why the judge ordered that the counter-claim had to be viewed in the context of when it was filed, not the circumstances now. It makes sense, cause the court can't really force IBM to prosecute a claim they never intended to file