Slashdot Mirror
IBM Asks Court to Toss SCO's Entire Case
Lost+Found writes "After three and a half years of case proceedings, summary judgement motions have been submitted in the highly controversial SCO v. IBM case. SCOX shares took a loss of 18.75%, or $0.39, to close at $1.69. IBM shares rose 0.97%, a gain of $0.79, to close at $82.00. From the article: 'Both sides in SCO v. IBM have filed motions for summary judgment. To be precise, SCO has filed one for partial summary judgment and IBM has filed several motions for summary judgment, one for each of SCO's claims and two more for good measure on two of IBM's counterclaims. In other words, it is asking the court to throw out SCO's entire case, and to grant it judgment on two counterclaims without even going to trial on those two.' More motions for summary judgement from SCO against IBM counterclaims are currently being uncovered at Groklaw."
It would be very interesting to find out what the end bill is for both IBM and SCO for this monumental waste of time (unless you're a lawyer of course, then this has been one of the best account padders of all time). How much is SCO worth these days anyway, even if IBM were awarded the entire company, I assume it wouldn't come close to negating the cost?
I think it's important not to get too worked up over this one. As much as I'd love to see the judge give SCO the legal equivalent of that old Mortal Kombat finishing move where the guy shoves his fist in through his enemy's sternum and rips out his spine, given the way this case has gone in the past I don't see it happening.
Motions for summary judgement are just part of the process; both sides file 'em, even when it's ridiculous (as SCO's are), usually the judge ignores them both, and life moves on.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What IBM should really do is formally offer SCO a settlement of One US Dollar. It would be One US Dollar more than SCO could ever hope to win with their baseless and time consuming lawsuit.
They could do it by scheduling a news conference, and taking that One US Dollar and placing it into a pretty frame, and the SCO attorneys would drool all over it and believe that they actually won something.
Jeeze.. just stick a fork in them - they are done.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
Wouldn't that be the perfect iceing on SCO's cake!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This has been going on for far too long now and it's been clear to everyone for years now that even the broken patent/copyright system won't side with SCO.
They've got nothing and SCO are a joke. Noone even takes this case seriously anymore.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
...if you want to make the $'s, go to law school. It doesn't matter if anything is produced, you still make money.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
One can only hope that this case will prevent "Legal Extorion" from occuring in the future; but alas, that is just wishful thinking... IBM is a big rich company. If SCO were to come after a small fish like you or I, would we have the money to defend ourselves the way IBM did? I seriously doubt it. More than likely, had SCO sued me directly, I would have run out of financial resources trying to defend myself, and would have capitulated. SCO probably would have gotten summary judgement against me and precedents in case law would have been set. The sad thing is, had SCO has smarter lawyers, they wouldn't have tried to take on a big fish like IBM, but would have sued a very small company with few finanical resources to defend themselves. Once a precedent has been set, they could have laughed all the way to the bank. Believe it or not, the legal system is full of cases which many would consider "Legal Extortion" (ie. Pay up now, or face an expensive and lenghty lawsuit). One industry I can think of where many hungry lawyers prey upon is the California Real Estate market. Which brings me back to a headline I once saw on a magazine for lawyers in California. The headline read: "Mold is GOLD!", meaning that the common practice of bringing in an environmentalist to find 'mold' in a home and then turning around and suing the former homeowner for not disclosing the potentially hazardous condition that is causing the new occupants all sorts of numerous ailments, is worth big bucks to many california lawyers.
Here's hoping that this case will help the little guy... but I'm not gonna hold by breath!
YahmaBLASTProxy - Bypass firewalls at school and work, anonymously.
Mortgage Tricks - Insider tips and tricks to get a low rate mortgage
And the people said, "About time!!"
Or can it pull an SCO trick itself? I mean just claim that the original investors were just legal extortionists and file a case against them and bleed them and give them a taste of their own medecine?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Judge K. grants most of IBM's wishes.
Judge K. grants Novell a writ of replevin. That means that the funds that SCO should have turned over to Novell when it sold licenses to Microsoft and Sun go into a trust account. SCO only has ten million in the bank so it is instantly bankrupt.
All the issues in all the trials are then amicably settled by the bankruptcy trustee.
Holy smoking crater Batman, this puppy is never going anywhere near a jury.
Well maybe some stuff will go before a jury. Darl may pay dearly for flapping his gums so loudly. There are the Lanham act issues. The SEC may also step in. Many people have said that the whole scheme involved a pump and dump on the stock market. There is certainly the odor of some kind of manipulation. In fact it has become a standing joke on the Yahoo SCOX message board (and now on InvestorsVillage as well). They call it the PaintBlaster with reference to the fact that the shares seem to get predictably 'painted up'.
All well and good, but the whole business certainly produced an impressive bulge in plenty of time for SCOX shareholders to line their pockets by selling stock that had been practically worthless the year before.
The legal soap opera is interesting, but the real question is whether anyone profited from that stock bulge... and if so who and how much... and whether anyone intends to go after them for securities fraud. If not, then the whole charade may have been immensely worthwhile for SCO's insiders. IBM wins a pyrrhic victory, SCO goes bankrupt, thanks to the concept of a corporation the officers have no personal liability, and if they owned SCO stock and managed to sell it in 2004 they could well be laughing all the way to the bank.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Yeah? Well, take that! And you smell!". It's like chimps throwing poo...
Never spent any time around lawyers, have you?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Controversial? I thought everyone agreed that SCO didn't have a case.
Exactly. I believe the only controversy has been whether this lawsuit should exist in the first place.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
Until there are general limitations on IP and patent litigation, this type of lawsuit will continue. It's the legal equivalent to chicken, which company runs out of money or guts first. The case will remain in some fashion until there are no more avenues to attack. With out some changes in the system, or best case a "loser pays" system, we will see this case and many others like it in the system for years. My prediction is that this case will drag on long into 2008, wasting million of shareholders dollars on both sides for very little gain.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=67838&cid=6216 434
Couldn't explain it any better.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Although SCO wants people to believe that it owns UNIX, the actual UNIX name trademark is owned by The Open Group and it is not contested.
in the antitrust case. Even the feds hire outside counsel from time to time.
Intresting things to note about SCO Currently:
58 percent of the company is held by major owners and mutual funds.
Ownership:
DERBY, STEVEN About 10%
LAMAR, STEVEN M About 10%
BAYSTAR CAPITAL II LP about 8%
Glenhill Advisors LLC 10.19%
The firm is worth between 20 and 40 Million USD and has 14 million in cash
but they go through 9 Million a Year.
- mph
Perhaps not enough to make IBM to actually want these difficulties, but they're smart enough to recognize and exploit the benefits.
I'm guessing no one at SCO is going to volunteer for federal ass-pounding prison if there's a way to drag some MSFT execs into the case with them.
I agree with your whole post 100%, but this is the tricky part.
Let's say all goes as IBM has planned and SCO gets their collective asses handed to them in court. And the SEC goes after them for insider trading once the whole case is settled and made public.
What next?
Exactly how do you draw a line between MS and the greybar hotel? Yeah, MS did finance the whole thing pretty much through Baystar. But investment isn't illegal.
I think you'd pretty much have to prove somehow that MS was giving them the money with the foreknowledge that they would use it to break the law. That would be seriously difficult to prove. And even then, it would be a corporation that was guilty - not individuals. The whole thing would work out to a fine at the worst, and MS is pretty famous for simply paying those off. The price of the ticket isn't a deterrant to these people.
IANAL, but that's how it seems to me.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Sorry, but I'm getting tired of this argument. Let's remember basic economics.
If you are IBM and you have, say, X lawyers as full-time staff and they cost you $Z a year, presumably they are not just sitting around playing checkers waiting for the next lawsuit; presumably you hired them full time because you have full time work for them to do -- work worth $Z to you. So you can't just divert these folks' energies to this SCO wankathon without giving up all the work they were going to do for you ordinarily. It's called 'opportunity cost' -- it essentially costs you $Z one way or another. So if you really do need that other work done, you'll have to hire other lawyers, probably for about $Z. Or you could leave your usual team on their usual tasks and hire other lawyers to sue SCO, and you'll probably spend about $Z on them if they are a lot like your first crew. One way or the other it is costing IBM. You know the saying, "There's no free lunch."
$META_SIG_JOKE
Only people who believe in God have a real reason to get up in the morning.
The rest of us are either in it for the money, or under the illusion that they are not.
You can't short a stock if you can't borrow some shares.
Basically when you sell short, you are borrowing some shares from someone else, selling them right away, and promising to pay them back later on.
If your broker can't find someone with a long position to "borrow" the shares from, they can't let you sell short.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
You can sue SCO for damages, you can't sue individual investors. That's exactly why companies incorporate.
SCO was hoping that the "Big Boys" (IBM, Microsoft, HP, SUN) would knuckle under in return for a sweetheart deal (the previously mentioned "One Dollar", or some similarly trivial figure for the "Big Boys" to pony up). Hellfire, I'm sure SCO would've settled for no remuneration from the "Big Boys", if they could only have gotten their hands on a legal judgement that they really do own all the *NIX code on Earth.
IBM doesn't want to crush SCO, they just don't want to be crushed by a mosquito with delusions of grandeur.
I hear you, I just don't think that would happen. MS would rather blow that money on lawyers or burn it in huge steaming piles in the middle of Redmond rather than let anyone else get their hands on it.
In a way, you know what this whole SCO/IBM thing reminds me of? The Korean War. No, really - stick with me on this.
You have two huge superpowers who disliked each other immensely at the time, China and the US. But rather than fight each other directly, they decided to hash it out through puppet governments and a limited engagement in Korea. The north got backing and some support from China. The south got the same from the US. Nobody really committed anything earth-shaking to the conflict - too costly to go in full-tilt.
Reminds me of the whole SCO thing immensely. SCO doesn't have enough backing to do their bit, so MS funds them through Baystar. And they go after Linux. And Linux suddenly gets enough backing to defend itself through IBM. Notice how IBM and MS don't fight each other directly? It all takes place in their own private Korea, SCO.
The analogy isn't perfect, but it's close enough I think.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.