SUSE Requests Arbitration with SCO

rm69990 writes "In response to SCO's amended complaint against Novell alleging copyright infringement, Novell subsidiary SUSE has requested from the International Chamber of Commerce that SCO be barred from asserting copyright over SUSE Linux due to the UnitedLinux agreement between Caldera, SUSE, Connectiva and Turbolinux. This agreement requires that SCO arbitrate with SUSE instead of filing claims, removes the copyright from any work SCO produced while in UnitedLinux, gives SUSE sublicensing rights to SCO's copyrights, and constitutes an SCO commitment that any code released under an OSS license in UnitedLinux remain Open Source. Novell has filed a motion to stay SCO's claims against Novell until the outcome of this arbitration. So now it looks like Linux users are protected both through the APA between Novell and SCO, but the UnitedLinux agreement as well."

Comments

Who are the REAL pros here?

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

Man, do not mess with Novell. I never worked for lawyers as good as these guys, and it's a plumb pleasin' pleasure to watch them work.

Methinks this gives the Novell lawyers a bit too much credit...after all, all they're doing is patiently assertiing that the sky is in fact blue and that water is, and has always been, wet.

The real geniuses here are the SCO lawyers, for keeping this ridiculous dog & pony show going for as long as they have, although I admit that the admiration I experience witnessing their work is generously laced with nausea and trepidation. When SCO's house of cards finally falls, it will be with a deafening crash amid roars of appreciation from the OSS crowd, but in the meantime, hats off to the talented lawyers that have managed to keep it standing this long. They deserve respect, grudging though it my be.

Re:Who are the REAL pros here?

[IamGarageGuy 2]

You have brought up a bit of a quandry here. When all is said and done and SCO is officially dead, and the lawyers have to find other work, will this be a feather in their cap with SCO on their resume or will they be seen as the bottom feeding scum that they are. You may not like the job they are doing but they are certainly doing it rather well.

Re:Who are the REAL pros here?

[PietjeJantje]

Somewhere there must be a dark cynical joke in this.
Here we have Linux, the accumulation of many volunteer hackers, and the only ones earning big, BIG money are... the lawyers.
The GPL didn't mention anything about THAT!

Re:Who are the REAL pros here?

[morgan_greywolf]

You have brought up a bit of a quandry here. When all is said and done and SCO is officially dead, and the lawyers have to find other work, will this be a feather in their cap with SCO on their resume or will they be seen as the bottom feeding scum that they are. You may not like the job they are doing but they are certainly doing it rather well.

Look. If you were the one hiring the lawyer, who would you rather have? A nice guy who plays nice and fair all the time, or a lawyer who knows every little legal loophole and how to exploit it? Or, to put it in terms that most Slashdotters can understand, who would you rather have on your software security project? A nice programmer who might know a thing or two about breaking security, but has never done it, or a smart hacker who knows his way around every local and remote root exploit known to man and has done so? As the saying goes, when you have to dig through dirt, you get yourself a worm.

Re:Who are the REAL pros here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks this gives the Novell lawyers a bit too much credit...

The real geniuses here are the SCO lawyers, for keeping this ridiculous dog & pony show going for as long as they have...

You don't know much about law, do you? Delaying is as easy as pushing pawns around. What's "plumb pleasin'" for PJ is that in this particular instance, SCO may have pushed up the wrong pawn in their 2nd Amended Complaint, opening themselves up to not fewer than 17 affirmative defenses deftly outlined by Novell's lawyers that they could have avoided had they been a little more on the ball. Hardly geniuses...

Re:Who are the REAL pros here?

[schon]

If you were the one hiring the lawyer, who would you rather have? A nice guy who plays nice and fair all the time, or a lawyer who knows every little legal loophole and how to exploit it?

Mu.

In the context of this litigation, I would rather have the one that says "look, you have no case. Find another way to solve your financial problem." Rather than "hey, it doesn't matter if you have no case, just sue them anyway - they'll just settle."

In other words, I would rather have the nice guy who plays fair even though he knows every little legal loophole.

Re:Where's that....

[Frymaster]

Where's that... cool SCO logo that used to grace these stories?

it's sco's intellectual property. cowboy neal is working on a reverse engineer of it, though.

SCOX hosed either way...

[rkhalloran]

Novell has claimed the UNIX copyrights never went to SCOX/Caldera because they didn't go to Santa Cruz that Caldera acquired. And with this they can claim whatever copyrights SCOX *does* have are subject to the terms of the UnitedLinux agreement with SuSE that Novell now owns.

Rock, hard place, SCOX.

UL

[Rinisari]

I knew that some good would come out of UnitedLinux some day. *dodges flames*

Yahoo! It's Darl...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

McBride! The rootinest tootinest outlaw ever to rustle *nix code!

Disclaimer: Yahoo! is a registered trademark of Yahoo!

Contracts :o\

[TubeSteak]

Contracts aren't really what make businesses work, it's the relationships.

If you have to fall back to pointing at the contract and saying "but you agreed," it means the business relationship is fuxxored... and not only are you going to have to win a contract lawsuit, you're going to have to reasses the relationship between the companies.

Obviously, SCO is an anomaly, but the effect is the same. Relationships were broken and contracts aren't going to stop the damage, merely mitigate it.

Other fun details about these filings

[Anonymous Coward]

1. If/when Novell gets their motion four of SCO's five claims will get booted out of court and off to arbitration-- but all of Novell's counterclaims against SCO get to stay in court
   
2. One of SCO's claims was for "unfair competition". Novell had to file a motion just to ask exactly what law they broke!!! SCO has gone beyond specifying laws broken but not being able to specify exactly what had been stolen, and now into the realm of insisting "well, they did something illegal" without being able to explain exactly what.

Re:Not quite.

[Kilz]

Courts like arbitration. The odds that this motion will fail are in the slim and none category. If you sign a contract with an arbitration clause, bank on going to arbitration. Arbitration was a term of a contract SCO's aleged predisser in interest signed. To get that contract not used agaisnt them they would basicly have to say they are not the predisser in interest. Since all of SCO's lawsuits are based on that fact, it isnt going to happen.
One other thing in that motion is that Novell asked for the money from the Microsoft and Sun deals to be placed in trust. This because the apa contract says that sco isn't supposed to be able to grant Unix licensees without Novells approval. If this happens, good bye SCO.

Re:What phase is this in?

[TubeSteak]

It's in the SCO-needs-to-put-up-or-shut-up stage

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200604050 02552215
IBM says to the Judge

SCO does not provide a complete set of reference points (version, file and line) for any of the 198 Items. Astonishingly, SCO fails specifically to identify a single line of System V, AIX or Dynix, and Linux code for any of the 198 Items. SCO does not identify specific System V, AIX, or Dynix version(s) or file(s) with respect to more than a few of the Items. Even specific versions and files of Linux are omitted with respect to many of the Items.
...
IV. THE ONLY APPROPRIATE REMEDY IS TO LIMIT SCO'S CLAIMS.
...
As discussed above, SCO has failed to provide IBM and its experts the most basic information needed for IBM to evaluate SCO's claims and prepare its defense. With respect to the 198 Items at issue, SCO has declined, as a practical matter, to tell IBM what is in dispute.
...
  We believe, respectfully, that SCO's failure to specify the 198 Items amounts to bad faith.

It gets much, much worse

[overshoot]

This is one of those "knew or should have known" slam dunks. Judges aren't terribly fond of finding lawsuits frivilous, but a case where there was a clear contract estopping the plaintiff from the exact actions they took goes well over the bar. Boies, Schiller & Flexner could end up paying all of IBM's, Novell's, and Red Hat's legal bills.

Then there's the SEC disclosure requirements -- the fact that SCOX' stock runup happened while the Management sat on a contract that gutted the basis of the whole lawsuit lottery makes them personally liable. Even the SEC might wake up for that one, but the NYAG's office must be smelling blood in the water.

Two reasons

[Weaselmancer]

Primary reason is that it's a ploy by Microsoft to discredit open source (Google for "Baystar" to learn more). Even though the case has no merit, they want to plant a bug in the ear of every PHB out there. "Doesn't Linux have some kinda legal trouble?" In that light, they have been successful somewhat.

Secondary reason, it's a stock scam. The longer they keep the company going, the longer they can bilk the shareholders for more cash. It's probably one of the most blatant examples of insider trading ever, but since it's small potatoes it has somehow flown under the radar. Here's hoping that changes soon.