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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.
Since when can you not change your case multiple times over the years? And since when do they have to show evidence? Isn't SCO's word good enough? This is a travesty! There is no justice!
Starsucks
Don't investors typically eventually say "ain't gonna happen" and walk away? Is there an obvious reason why this hasn't happened yet?
I am a
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
The sarcastic implication being that it's bad news for SCO. Kind of like when an obnoxious player on the opposite team sprains an ankle: "aww, tough luck, buddy."
I am a
There's a lot of discussion on Groklaw about what happens when tSCOg goes bankrupt.
The minute tSCOg loses the first of the many cases it has going, it goes bankrupt. Its fate is then in the hands of the bankrupcy trustee and the creditors. My guess is that all the cases then get settled out of court on terms agreeable to the creditors. In the case of IBM this means a declaration that Linux is totally unemcumbered by anyone's Unix IP.
Not sure what planet Rob and Zonk are from, but to most of us this is good news.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Judge Kimball is on to them.
We non-lawyers think of judges as impartial watchers of the courtroom. Sometimes they are. Most of the time, though, they pick a winner and spend the rest of the case guiding the decision the way they think it should go and covering themselves for appeal.
That's how it's been with SCO v IBM. After months and months without any credible evidence, after seeing the SCO group twist his words and the words of Magistrate Judge Wells (who's handling much of the pre-trial bickering), he began to take on a more aggressive tone. He hasn't been on IBM's side, but it looks like he has seen the inevitable result and is trying to make sure his decision doesn't get turned over on appeal.
So when The SCO Group tried to amend their complaint based on an out-of-context reading of IBM's Ninth Counterclaim (a request for a ruling that IBM didn't infringe SCO's copyrights), he said no, that the counterclaim must be read in context. He said they were just delaying. if he thought they had a snowball's chance in July, he might have allowed the change.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
SCO's new motto:
No evidence, no customers, no future.
(And the only way you can convince me that Daryl McBride isn't a worthless cunt is by providing a signed statement from a gynacologist)
And that friends, is where the nuts hit the grinder.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I'd say it's bad news all around because the case won't go to trial until 2007. 2007! How SCO has been able to stretch this case out until 2007 is beyond me.
I furthermore guess that this bidder will be Sun, because it's a major licensee of SCO IP and would ABSOLUTELY NOT want to be in a position of having it's Solaris based on the IP of any other potential acquiror.
Then we'll have some peace for a while, as whomever ends up owning this IP will not have the stomach to continue the lawsuit; but it'll stay in some uncontested limbo forever.
Other reasons why I think it'll be Sun: Some of sun's management like to see themselves as an operating-systems-IP company. They want to own the part of SCO that IBM licensed to be better positioned in their "IP sharing partnership" with Microsoft. etc.
Company spokesperson Blake Stonewell took a more conservative posture. "Of course we would have prefered to present recently discovered new evidence of IBM's further misappropriation of our intellectual property to the Power architecture". Stonewell further added "this ruling is actually a major victory for us. IBM has consistently resisted any depositions of upper management, who orchestrated the wholesale theft of our code and trade secrets for inclusion in the derivitive linux kernel".
Bert Young, Chief Financial Officer of the SCO Group said "we are pleased by the now definitive revised schedule", and added "because legal fees have been capped for the duration of this trail and any appeals, we believe now concentrating on this already well establish course of action will best serve SCO's shareholders. We look forward to the final resolution of this suit, and the opportunity to expand our SCOsource licensing revenue."
About SCO
The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX) helps millions of customers to grow their businesses everyday. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of thousands of resellers and developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services, visit www.sco.com.
SCO, and the associated SCO logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from the expectations contained herein. The forward-looking statements contained herein include statements about the consummation of the transaction with SCO and benefits of the pending transaction with SCO. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described herein include the inability to obtain regulatory approvals and the inability to successfully integrate the SCO business. GNAA is under no obligation to (and expressly disclaims any such obligation to) update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The coverage that SCO got in the media when they claimed that Linux had stolen code in it was enormous. Not only did they get tons of coverage with a resulting boost to their stock price, but dozens of professional opinion expressers signed their NDA and gave statements to the effect that SCO's case was a slam dunk and that Linux was full of stolen code. Years later after yet another clear sign that SCO in fact has NO evidence, the press is almost entirely silent on the issue.
So either noone cares that SCO basically used the press to execute a brilliant pump and dump scheme against the entire industry (which would be a notable story by itself), or the press has a definite anti-Linux bias. Either way, the press has a lot to answer for in this case.
Basically when Santa Cruz and IBM worked on the project known as Monterey in the late 90s, it was understood that both companies would use code developed from the joint venture in their products. SCO claims that IBM used the jointly developed code on Power based machines when the original agreement only specified that IBM could use it on Intel machines. They filed in October 2004 to change the claim to add this to the current suit. They wanted more discovery and time to pursue this new claim.
In the current lawsuit, the deadline for changing the claim was February 2004. Under certain circumstances, a party can go beyond deadlines but only for "compelling reasons." SCO's compelling reason was (1) they "just discovered" this fact and (2) IBM filed a counterclaim (9th) that requires them to research it.
IBM's answer to the court was convincing and many fold. They produce documents, emails, presentations, public announcements from Santa Cruz as far back as 1998 that describe how IBM was to use code from the joint project in Power. They also produce IBM public presentations, software documentation, and public announcements about the same thing. Finally they presented industry reports and discussions from tech magazines both online and offline from 2000 that discusses IBM's use of the code. IBM ironically points out that SCO provided some of this source material to IBM in the lawsuit filings.
IBM's message is simple: (1) Santa Cruz knew. If SCO is the legal and corporate successor to Santa Cruz, then it is SCO's duty to know everything that Santa Cruz did. (2) Since SCO provided some of the material, SCO had to know since 2003 when they filed the lawsuit. (3) Even if SCO was totally clueless about Santa Cruz's materials and it's own filings, a simple search online up to 4 years ago would have uncovered the fact that IBM was going to use the code in Power.
As far IBM's 9th Counterclaim, IBM chose to reduce/clarify the scope so that it was not as broad and SCO's new claim would have no relevance.
On a side note, one of IBM's statements is interesting:
SCO wanted to convince the judge that no more discovery would be necessary to add this new claim saying that they had already done a lot of work. But IBM asks the question: If they have compared our closed source AIX with their Unix, why do they claim they couldn't compare open source Linux with their Unix without our AIX source code?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Ransom Love sold all his stock when the lawsuit started. link
But the other "bad news" that is linked is GOOD for SCO. (Novels motion for dismissal in SCO's slander suit against them is denied.)
Actually, The Santa Cruz Organization (ie. "Old" SCO) was considered quite "cool" around 1992. This was when they were still a company actively involved in the development and engineering of high-performance PC-based UNIX operating systems, of course. OpenServer and OpenDesktop were quite revolutionary in the early 1990s. Remember, Linux was in its infancy at this point, as was 386BSD.
Unless you went with Coherent or XENIX (also co-developed by SCO, by the way), your choice for a rock-solid UNIX on Intel PCs was OpenServer. And it did perform and served many companies very well. That is why today's The SCO Group is still able to obtain some revenue from their OpenServer products. While horribly outdated today, they were excellent and innovative products in the early 1990s.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Welcome to the strange world of Quantum Intellectual Property Infringment. Consider yourself introduced to the McBride Uncertainty Principle, whereby you may know the exact speed at which SCO's claims are changing, or you may know the exact location of the (currently) infringing property, but you cannot determine both with any precision. The harder the courts look, the more difficult they are making it to find. The courts cannot decide without both a claim and its matching proof, so this is not the path to resolution. The court's only hope is to measure the validity of a quanta of infringement claims, and make a single decision that acts on all of them.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
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.
Spot on - at the moment we begin arguing about the political background of a judge being relevant we have lost.
Being a facist, communist, or a feudalist shouldn't make you guilty or not guilty - or change what was meant by the constitution. Sure, there may be borderline cases where that reflects your leanings but, while they may be interesting cases, they shouldn't be *that* far reaching.
I think the issue that causes is that in some circles, and some judges, this becomes less true. Some low, some high. Some judges allow "creative thinking" to get out of things, others rule based on thier feelings (for the latter - see Judge Judy on TV). Many see people who rule with thier political feelings as an expressway into getting thier agenda's enforced, but that is purely short term thinking - works great as long as the judges always agree with your political bent, terrible when they do not.
The 8'th circuit court is one of the saner as far as I can tell (but then I'm neither a lawyer ot a judge - just a political junkie). I would rather have 9 of them one level up than the group we have now, regardless of thier political ideas.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it