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SCO Claims Ownership of ELF To Court

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-the-keelber-kind dept.

l2718 writes "In the most recent punch-counterpunch of the SCO v. IBM case, IBM is claiming that SCO is trying to vastly expand their claims beyond what they alleged in their list of material allegedly misused by IBM filed last December, using their expert reports. For example, two years ago we covered SCO's claim to own ELF, the main executable format of Linux. Apparently they are have finally made the same claim to a court of law, after the deadline for making such claims. From IBM's memorandum: 'The final disclosures identify 19 Linux files relating to the ELF specification, as well as excerpts from several specification documents. Dr. Cargill far exceeds this claims ... asserting infringement of the entire ELF format ... also ... for the first time, claims to the ELF magic number.'"

3 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The only conclusion I can reach... by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IBM long ago had the opportunity to buy SCO off, or even buy them outright. Their strategy is to make all claims against Linux GO AWAY. If they buy SCO off, they still leave themselves (and everyone else) open to future claims against Linux. By winning the case, they close that door forever. Meanwhile, SCO is hanging on like a punch-drunk prizefighter; if they let their guard down for even a second, they're gonna get CLOBBERED.

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  2. They could not claim this until now by Mostly+a+lurker · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They are pretty safe adding completely ridiculous new claims now because the court can be trusted to throw them out on procedural grounds: the date for final-last-no-more-chances disclosure of all allegedly infringing code was last December. Thus, they will never have to try to justify such claims as copyright on Posix and ELF; and rights to the general filesystem layout of SVR4.

    The real question is why bother making the claims at all? I think the answer is a combination of

    • bury the court in paper in an attempt to delay proceedings;
    • try to salvage some of the original claims: there is a pending motion to throw out the bulk of SCO's items from last December on the basis of lack of specificity; they probably hope that, faced with a mountain of SCO claims, the judge may be reluctant to disallow absolutely everything and will allow some of the vague "methods and concepts" items on SCO's December list;
    • material that can be used to spread FUD about UNIX IP in Linux; they can claim that these broad claims were thrown out on a "technicality", but they are "comfortable going to court with what remains".
    They really are arseholes.
  3. Re:As *the* former Novell/USG employee... by ESR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Darren Davis: I'd like to discuss this bit of history with you. Please email
    me at esr@thyrsus.com

    --
    >>esr>>