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Novell Bombards SCO with Summary Judgment Motions
rm69990 writes "Novell has filed 4 motions for Summary Judgment against SCO, which essentially ask the court to toss the remainder of SCO's case that isn't already being arbitrated between SUSE and SCO. One seeks a ruling from the court that Novell transfered none of the copyrights in Unix to SCO, which is backed up by many exhibits and declarations from people who negotiated the deal. Another, along the same lines, asks the court to toss the portions of SCO's Unfair Competition and Breach of Contract claims pertaining to the Unix copyrights. The third asks the court to rule that Novell did not violate the Technology License Agreement between SCO and Novell, and last and also least, the fourth seeks to toss the Slander of Title for the additional reason that SCO has failed to prove any special damages. These motions follow 2 motions for summary judgment filed by Novell late last year on 2 of their counterclaims."
I remember the time when software was just software and no politics...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Don't worry. SCO will probably just sue them for it.
It's been at least 20 minutes since they've filed suit against someone. They're probably getting all fidgety.
/sig
I'm extremely happy with this, mainly because it puts a HUGE stake through the heart of the SCO v. IBM case. Novell has provided testimony from the lawyer who drew up the SVRX contract with SCO that blows holes in all the SCO claims. The lawyer also provided draft copies of the contract, including notes & comments regarding changes, reasons for the wording, etc. This should once and for all provide the legal decision that SCO does NOT have any claims to own unix, which basically guts the remainder of their lawsuits.
IIRC, every single litigant involved in cases with SCO has filed motions for summary judgement.
I think they're filing them more in hope than in expectation - in the hope that it will close the case fast and minimise legal fees. Novell, IBM et al are a lot of things, but I can't imagine they want to hand over any more money than they have to to their lawyers.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Thats because they didn't goto bed with them willingly. Novel was raped in essence.
Novel only made the deal with microsoft to make developing stuff that can interact easier. If balmer hadn't started this proof of IP violations thing, No one would have thought different. Mozilla is in bed with MS, they ever jointly agree the browser wars are over and that they need to focus on security more then anything else. Yet no one complains and I think it is because there hasn't been any accusations of IP problems yet.
The thing with novel is how microsoft reacted with it. Not how novel went into business deals or anything. I'm a little surprised the novel is still willing to help the free software community out after all this. And there had been quite a bit of FUD being passed by the free software community concerning stuff in the GPL that didn't exist and mudding Novel's name and intentions and such. This must be a fondness of IBM more then OpenSource or anything. But I'm not sure.
The declarations that Novell just filed would gut SCO's case all by themselves. SCO's case is so feeble that there are many things that would independently destroy it. All SCO has to do is lose on any of about ten different things and they lose the whole shooting match.
Consider the declarations of Braham and Amandia. These are both people who were directly responsible for negotiating and writing the contracts with Santa Cruz. They clearly remember the events that took place and have original documents to back them up. They say there was no intent by Novell to transfer the copyrights and they made darn sure the contract and the ammendment did not transfer the copyrights. Santa Cruz asked that the copyrights be transferred and Novell agreed only that Santa Cruz could use the copyrights to develop and sell the product they were developing.
These declarations directly contradict SCO's theories and the half remembered garbage of their witnesses who weren't actually involved in writing the contracts.
So, Novell could very well get their PSJ. In fact, Novell could get the psj even without these declarations because the wording of the contract and ammendment is clear and there is no written conveyance of the copyrights. The latter is required by law and the judge can decide the case as a matter of law (which is necessary for a psj). So you could be right. The new filings might not be necessary to decide the case.
Assuming Novell wins the majority of judgments, I wonder what would happen if Novell some day decides that Linux is no longer viable as SCO did...
Quick! Hide all the chairs!!!
I ain't had this much fun since the pigs ate my little brother.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
20 minutes...the time between SCO lawsuits, and the time between smoking crack and then needing to smoke it again.
Coincidence?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
You write like the judgments have already been ruled for, but this is unlikely. The Microsoft Whore Novell will win the case in the end, but with patent law as it now stands, Linux will lose as more and more Patent Kings come out of the woodwork for their slice of the pie. Unless there is patent reform, in the years to come, for businesses Linux will be no freer than Windows.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The Microsoft + Novell deal is just SCO + EV1 servers all over again. The schemers are running out of creativity. Both deals are more smoke than fire. Neither is meaningful because their secret nature precludes people from making rational decisions about them. How do you put a value on the products of either SCO or Novell, when they've entered agreements that prohibit them from disclosing who owns what? Is the point of this to allow both of them to sell you the same thing, twice? When your marketing approach is "Sign this contract or we'll sue you out of business whether our claims have merit or not," people have to start wondering what makes you morally superior to a mugger and whether being in an enduring relationship with you is preferable to going directly to court or cheaper than settling you with a different kind of "contract.". Eventually these people are going to try this with the entirely wrong victim and it won't take the courts to sort the matter out.
The declaration of Novell's outside attorney that did the deal, Tor Braham reads like death to SCO's claims. Basically he was there, wrote the draft that got signed. He signed it himself. He kept drafts of what the Old SCO asked for and the edits where they were struck, and explains why very clearly: SCO just didn't have the cash, Novell wasn't interested in selling the Unix copyrights, Novell needed to protect its interests in case of an OldSCO bankruptcy.
It's interesting that just 1/2 hr before the close of market two days ago somebody unloaded 466,000 shares of SCOX, just over 2% of the company. As of December 31, 2006 yahoo lists only seven companies and two insiders with that much of a stake. I wonder who....
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This seems to be going on forever, but it's not. The end is in sight. SCO can stall, but the process does move onward. Discovery is over; everything significant that's going to come out has come out. Now we're in the stage where bogus claims get thrown out via summary judgment motions. That phase is well along; summary judgment motions have been made and briefed in both the Novell and IBM cases. Soon the judge will decide them.
The Novell-SCO contract says that Novell retains "all copyrights". If the judge rules that the contract means what it says, that ends the copyright issue.
Then, based on that, the summary judgment motions by IBM against SCO mostly get decided in favor of IBM.
Remember, for IBM, this is no longer a problem. Is it hurting Linux server sales? No. Are customers bothered by it? No. Can IBM afford the legal costs? IBM revenue was $91,000,000,000 in 2006. I doubt this issue gets much management attention in Armonk any more.
There is no such thing as corporate greed. There is greed. Humans have greed corporations do not. One of the worst episodes in the history of the US was when the US Supreme Court decided corporations, a fiction created by government, were tantamount to people. And continuing to anthropomorphize them only perpetuates the real problem. Corporations don't have soul, emotions, etc.. People do.
So why do socialists and "anti-capitalists" and so on continue to refer to them as if they were human? Because it belies the problem to socialism. The actions taken are done by humans. Humans can be greedy. Sometimes greed can be good, often it is bad. Pretending that corporations have greed, feelings, emotions, desires, etc. lets people feel good about humans while feeling bad about corporations.
The problem with governments and corporations are the same, and for the same reason. The more humanity is separated from itself via fictions such as corporations and government, the more they people can justify things they would not do themselves in a more personal situation.
So whine all you want, but put the blame squarely where it belongs - on the people, not the fictions called corporations.
This particular problem is exacerbated by the fiction of "intellectual property". Here we have two fictions being combined to control others. For all the frailties of humans, it gets worse when we exclude humans. At least humans have qualities that limit or hinder the damage of our frailties when we are involved
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
I have been reading this farce for years now and I am taken a back by the idea that you can litigate an issue for so long and waste so many resources with no real evidence. If this whole doesn't show the need for real copyright and patent law changes then nothing does. Our legal system is a joke! A seriously bad joke!