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IBM Motion to Limit SCO Claims Granted
Kalak writes "IBM's motion to limit SCO's claims to those that have specific version, file and line numbers has been granted, in part. At the end of last year, SCO made 294 allegations. IBM asked for dismissal of 198 of them due to lack of this information, 1 SCO withdrew, 1 IBM withdrew from the request, and 185 of them have been dismissed from the case. This leaves 107 of the charges are left to be addressed by means other than lack of specificity (such as public domain, BSD code, who owns it, etc.) As usual, Groklaw, has discussion, as well as the Order and an excellent chart of the history of alleged violations has been created as well."
Judge Wells supports her decisions in a manner that effectively prevents them from being appealed.
She uses Sandeep Gupta's (he testified for SCO) testimony to support the requirement for specificity.
She uses the fact that SCO didn't complain when it was ordered to produce specific lines of code. She also notes that SCO never asked for clarification on that point.
She is firing SCO's own testimony and actions (or lack thereof) right back in their faces.
Some posters on Groklaw and the Yahoo SCOX message board have speculated that this decision means that a couple of the counterclaims are a slam dunk. In particular, it now appears that Linux is completely clear of copyright violations wrt anything that SCO owns or says it does.
coral cache
In December 2003, near the beginning of this case, the court ordered SCO to,
"identify and state with specificity the source code(s) that SCO is claiming
form the basis of their action against IBM." Even if SCO lacked the code behind
methods and concepts at this early stage, SCO could have and should have, at
least articulated which methods and concetps formed "the basis of their action
against IBM." At a minimum, SCO should have identified the code behind their
methods and conceptws in the final submission pursuant to this original order
entered in December 2003 ane Judge Kimball's order entered in July 2005.
Don't read much into them defending themselves, if it was a few million dollars, it would be done. It was a few billion, they might be able to afford it but you're not going to get a billion dollars from them without a fight. No - even if it was a "few million" it wouldn't have ever been done, because IBM knows that once someone does it to them, others will try the same tactic.
To put it into its proper perspective - they wouldn't have done the deal even for a few thousand.
Also, in the beginning SCO was making noises in the background of "about $25 million" and IBM basically tod them to FOAD.
It's worth reading the entire order from Judge Wells. However, for the benefit of those who don't enjoy reading legal documents, here's are the highlights. These are the Judge's words:
Essentially, the claims of copyright infringment in Linux based on UNIX source code just got thrown out of court. There are a few minor claims remaining, but they're minor and mostly related to old contractual issues that can only involve IBM, not third parties using Linux.
This is all still pretrial manuvering, during which the case becomes better defined. In the next phase, we have "dispositive motions", which will probably include a motion by IBM for summary judgement against SCO. Some more SCO claims will probably be thrown out at that phase.
21 actually
SCO made 294 claims.
IBM objected to 198 of the claims.
Judge Wells allowed 17 of IBM's 198 disputed claims and barred the rest.
That leaves 117 of SCO's 294 claims standing. ~66% gone.
1 really damn good read. Judge Wells's order was fantastically fun.
The Statue of Liberty is America's lawn jockey.
IBM has filed counterclaims against SCO - which will ensure that there are definate rulings to show that LINUX is safe.
SCO can dodge their own claims..but they cant dodge IBM's Counter claims
Of course they didn't because their whole game is to stall stall stall.
At a minimum, IBM's sixth counterclaim is for breach of the GPL, which is based on copyright law.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
It WON'T be dismissed with prejudice. The case will continue. IBM will most likely win the case by summary judgement (much better than the case just being dismissed, as it will cost SCO big time). IBM will most likely win their counterclaims, putting SCO into bankruptcy. That is, unless Novell cleans out SCO on their own claims first, as Novell is gunning for SCO as well, both through arbitration between SUSE and SCO, and Novell's counterclaims where they accuse SCO of embezzling their money and ask that the full sum of money be awarded to Novell that SCO collected from Microsoft, Sun and Linux users.
6 4357
SUSE assigned a value over $50 million dollars to the arbitration alone. Novell is countersuing SCO for over $25 million when you include their failure to remit royalties and slander of title counterclaims. SCO currently has $28 million in assets, far short of what their legal adversaries are claiming against them for, when you add in Red Hat's claims and IBM's counterclaims. http://finance.google.com/finance?fstype=bi&cid=6
SCO is toast, plain and simple. The time for the case to merely be dismissed has come and gone, which is a GOOD THING, not a bad thing, since SCO will now have to face the consequences for their actions.
Umm... Scopes lost his case, even though he was obviously right.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Barratry can be a crime. Vexatious litigation can get you disbarred. Frivolous litigation (in the legal sense, not the tort reformer sense) can carry penalties too.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The lawyers must have known that SCO had no evidence to support their accusations and therefore could not win. Persuing an action knowing that it was a hopeless case with no justification is unethical even for lawyers (yes they do have rules they are supposed to follow). Lawyers who break these rules in order to abuse the legal system the way these ones have deserve to be held accountable - that their clients paid them to do it is no excuse at all.