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Novell Asks Court to Separate SCOsource Money
clusterix writes "Groklaw has posted Novell's answer to SCO's slander of title complaint. In it, Novell produces many counter claims. The most eye-catching is the claim for the revenue from the SCOsource licenses bought by Microsoft and Sun and others. Novell states that they must be SVRX licenses which entitles them to 95% of revenue in royalties. They further request a trust to be constructed to hold the revenue until the case is decided. It is hard to see how the judge could deny such a request to protect the money which will likely bankrupt SCO."
If they request the money be set aside, it'll force SCO to put it's money where it's legal mouth is.
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
Completely disagree. If SCO is bankrupt without the funds in question, and those funds do belong to Novell, then Novell stands to lose considerably if/when SCO goes bankrupt anyway.
Given that situation, it's not at all unreasonable for at least SOME of that money to be physically sequestered.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
back when this whole thing started, sun was pretty anti-linux, and we all know microsoft loves linux. i think this was a grand conspiracy conducted jointly by microsoft and sun, and the method of payoff to sco was the licensing purchases that they made.
Too good to be true, in fact. For that reason alone I don't see this happening.
The real question on this story will be how much and when was information known. Did SCO fraud MS/Sun or where they partners in all this. If so, then they may end up be held liable by IBM/SEC.
In addition, with the fraudulent paper, it shows that SCO is willing to go to extraordinary lengths. I wonder if perhaps the 2 suicides should be investigated further? Mormons do not commit suicides and both were practicing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This has the potential of finishing off SCO for good. The way things have been going with this case, I don't have so much hope that will be the end, but if it could be, what a grand finale that would be! Not only will we have the satisfaction to see the litigious bastards go down, but more importantly, beautiful irony, the money Microsoft and Sun had invested in hurting Linux will end up in the pockets of a Linux champion! Talk about karma...
I code, therefore I am.
As noted in a Groklaw comment:
....
110. novell also seeks an order from the court attaching SCO's assets pending
adjudication of this claim because SCO is quickly dissipating its assets.
And I disagre with your comment in at least one other regard -- I never implied that the court would "award" money. "Sequester" != "award".
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Gad, does no one have any imagination? SCO has something over $18M in assets. Novell claims they are owed some $24M. So what's to prevent the judge from sequestering, say, $12M of SCO's assets?
They don't go immediately bankrupt, and Novell has some recourse in the event they're correct -- which is exactly what they've asked the judge for.
Clearly no judge is going to 'award' Novell $24.5M without actually trying the case. That is far from saying that an interim position does not exist....
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Again, that would be 66% of the company value being taken from shareholders, creditors, etc. Why does Novell get "first bite" at the assets for "maybe" at the expense of 100% for sure creditors/shareholders?
;-)
If this was say MS where the ruling would cause a basically 0% harm to all those other parties then it would have a much better chance. Even though your 12M idea wouldn't take ALL thier asstes, a court isn't going to cause such MAJOR harm for "maybe".
What this may do (as I'm sure its meant to) is cause additional questions for shareholders. If this IS true, then SCO's balance sheet just got another HUGE liablity on it and the value of thier investment has taken even more of a nose dive.
Maybe it will happen, who can say for CERTAIN, but to say "how can it not happen" seems a bit "hopeful"
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Word of advice regarding groklaw: RTFA *and* the comments. The stuff is not as simple as it looks. It's a lot like debugging somebody else's code. Then come back when there is a new article, lather, rinse, repeat. I say this because there's a metric assload of wrong ideas and misinformation floating around about how this stuff works.
C|N>K
What this may do (as I'm sure its meant to) is cause additional questions for shareholders.
Indeed, even for the insider shareholders who may not have been aware of this potential debt to Novell. Also, SCO will have to respond and give some attempt to explain, for the record, why Novell is not entitled to the $25 million. SCO will have to claim the licenses sold were not for anything covered by the APA, which will lead to questions regarding their earlier SEC filings; or SCO will have to layout a position that the APA is not valid in regard to the licenses sold to MS and Sun -- but the right to sell such licenses is one of the main pillars of SCO's multiple litigations.
So what is it, SCO-boys? Did you sell the licenses to MS and Sun without telling them that the licenses really weren't what you sold them as? Did you sell them and forget to pay Novell? Did you sell them claiming that the agreement making you authorized to sell them is invalid? Or, how about this one: Did MS and Sun buy these licenses knowing that they were not valid and knowing that the fees would be used for litigation and not for fulfilling contract obligations with Novell?
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
that would be 66% of the company value being taken from shareholders, creditors, etc.
No, it wouldn't. That would be 66% of money that was never SCO's in the first place
Why does Novell get "first bite" at the assets for "maybe" at the expense of 100% for sure creditors/shareholders?
They don't. This isn't talking about assets, it's talking about money that was collected on behalf of Novell. It was never SCO's, it's not an assett.