Novell Files New Summary Judgement Motion

rm69990 writes "In yet another piece of SCO news this week, Novell has filed a new motion for partial summary judgment, asking the court to declare that Novell is entitled to direct SCO to waive its claims against IBM, that Novell has the right to take these actions on SCO's behalf if SCO refuses to comply and that SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver. Since SCO's case against IBM is primarily a contract case, this issue affects the IBM case far more than the ongoing copyright issue between Novell and SCO. This bad week for SCO just got even worse."

Comments

Re:It's a nice gesture...

[Hope Thelps]

You'd think that Novell could have filed this lawsuit a year or three ago instead of waiting till right before SCO vs IBM goes to trial (in a few months).

IBM doesn't go to trial in a few months. Judge Kimball has just postponed the trial date. Hearings on the summary judgment motions will be in March. Rulings on them probably a few months after that. Actual trial, if ever needed, maybe 2008. Part of the reason for that schedule is because Judge Kimball ruled that the Novell trial should proceed first. It's worth noting that when he asked the lawyers for IBM and SCO, IBM's lawyers argued that Novell should go first.

So that's one reason for 'why now' - because it's recently been held that the Novell case proceeds ahead of the IBM case.

Another reason? Because of the recent rulings limiting SCO's list of infringing materials in the IBM case to that which they disclosed by the deadline. So that's 300 odd lines of code potentially subject to copyright infringement. When there were still wild claims of millions of lines SCO might have had better luck arguing that the contract terms just COULDN'T have been meant to allow Novell to waive such a massive breach. Now that argument just looks silly.

Last reason I can think of off hand, as noted IBM's motions for PSJ have their hearings scheduled for March. Ideally, Judge Kimball will rule at that point that there is no copyright infringement, and not just because of the Novell waiver but because there was no breach needing to be waived. If he doesn't feel that he can rule that then all the arguments from all parties are on the table to rule on the waiver instead as a second best option (from the viewpoint of Linux supporters).

There are a lot of pieces falling into place right now.

Bye bye SCOX

[diegocgteleline.es]

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=SCOX

Re:It's a nice gesture...

[Curtman]

I would like to see SCO squirm in public court for a little longer.

They'll be in court for a while yet anyway. The sooner the SCO-vs-IBM case is over, the IBM-vs-SCO case can get underway. That's the one I want to watch.

Re:Oh, very clever!

[Hope Thelps]

Novell *waives* IBM's transgression rather than letting the court prove there wasn't one in the first place. Now, coming as it does after the MS deal

Novell's waiver was over 3 years ago and has been public knowledge for most of that time. All that's happening now is that Novell are asking for a judgment declaring that their waiver is valid. IBM's motions for partial summary judgment on the copyright issue are all ready on the table. Chance are the judge will find that the 300 odd non-contiguous lines of allegedly infringing code don't amount to infringement of a protectable element anyway even IF they turn out to have been copied verbatim from SysV (very unlikely) and even if SCO is eventually ruled to own SysV (very unlikely). This is at most a back up motion in case the judge isn't convinced by everything else.