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Judge Kimball Strikes SCO's Jury Trial Demand
watchingeyes writes "In a ruling on various pre-trial motions in limine and other, similar motions in the SCO vs Novell case, Judge Kimball today issued a ruling striking SCO's demand for a jury trial, ruling that Novell's claims seek equitable, and not legal relief. In addition, he denied SCO's request for entry of judgment that would allow them to appeal his ruling on the UNIX copyrights and Novell's waiver rights, ruling that if SCO wants to appeal any of his rulings, it can do them all at once after trial. He also granted Novell's request to voluntarily dismiss its own breach of contract claim, denied SCO's motion to exclude press coverage and evidence from the IBM case, granted Novell's motion in limine preventing SCO from contesting his summary judgment ruling at trial, granted Novell's second motion in limine preventing SCO from arguing that SCOsource licenses that license SVRx only incidentally aren't SVRx licenses, denied another SCO motion in limine which improperly asked the Judge to issue rulings on contractual issues and denied Novell's final motion in limine which sought to prevent SCO from contesting Novell's apportionment of royalties analysis. Looks like SCO will be facing a trial in-front of a judge which has already ruled against them numerous times."
SCO is an exceptional software company, and I personally feel their legal claims are on solid... ...hahahahahahaha...
Damnit, I can never get through that sentence without laughing.
Hang em out to dry, Your Honor.
- Scott
"Aye, you chopped my legal arm off! No big deal! Have at you!"
"Aye, you chopped my legal legs off! No big deal! I can still hop! Have at you!"
This is my sig.
America may have many things wrong with it, but in this case (pun intended) it's very nice to see a sitting judge wield a powered nail-gun with such accuracy.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
In limine means 'at the threshold'. It's a type of motion that's filed right before a trial is set to start, usually to have the judge rule on which evidence to include or exclude.
For those not understanding what's going on: Kimball ruled that the copyrights on UNIX System V don't belong to SCO, they belong to Novell, because the Asset Purchase Agreement, signed between Novell and Santa Cruz never transferred the copyrights, just the business. Santa Cruz was to collect UNIX royalties for SVR5 for Novell and keep a portion for themselves in exchange. The SCO Group stopped paying Novell for UNIX sometime ago, and Novell wants its money.
Now if SCO doesn't own the UNIX copyrights, then how can they sue IBM? The answer is, they can't, especially since Novell told them they can't. Now SCO wants to appeal this decision before the Novell trial is over so they can still sue IBM. And they want any evidence from the IBM trial to not be used in the Novell trial (they filed a similar motion in the IBM trial). And Kimball said "No, and no."
In short: SCO is screwed. After Novell is through with them, if anything is left, IBM will launch its Lanham Act claims against SCO and there will be a smokin' hole in Linden, Utah, where SCO HQ used to be.
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SCO should have blamed everything on a one-armed man; Kimball would have been much more sympathetic.
I want to see them go and pierce the "corporate veil" and go after the source of the money SCO used to bankroll the lawsui^H^H^H^H^H^Hscam... I want to know who the real "PIPE Fairy" is... we all suspect Microsoft, but I want to see hard evidence that can be used against Microsoft.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"motion in limine" == a motion before a trial regarding what evidence is allowed to be shown to a jury
"equitable relief" == court-ordered restitution of property, as opposed to fines and punishments. Suing someone to enforce a contract they signed or pay back money they owe you is equitable relief, as opposed to suing them for punitive damages, which is a legal matter. The relevancy here is that equitable matters don't warrant a jury trial, whereas legal ones do.
"waiver" == A formal way of stating that you, or someone acting on your behalf, will not enforce one of your (or their) rights. In this case, Novell issued a waiver on behalf of SCO over whatever it was that SCO was suing IBM over (Normally you can't waive someone else's rights like this, but SCO signed a contract that allowed Novell to do just that)
"dismiss" == to throw a court claim out and not hear it.
"summary judgment" == A judgement on a claim instead of an actual trial, because there was no disputed evidence to hear, so the Judge could rule on it immediately.
It's bad for SCO, this ruling; it doesn't get to bamboozle a fresh naïve jury but instead gets one of the two judges they've been irritating for the past 4 years, so that's it's next-to-last hope for a favourable ruling out the window. The only ray of hope is that it might be able to use some new evidence out to show that whatever Microsoft and Sun paid for wasn't the stuff that Novell was recently ruled to have owned. But it'll be fighting against it's own public statements and anything it's said in other courtrooms, so it's chances are slimmer than slim...
One question that will be settled at trial is apportionment. That is, how much of the money paid by Microsoft and Sun belongs to Novell. The judge has clearly said that some of the money belongs to Novell. The best SCO can do is argue that it is a very small amount.
SCO's problem is that they basically told the SEC that all the money belongs to Novell. SCO tried to have that evidence excluded but failed.
It is likely that Novell will get more than 50% of the money. The judge will grant a constructive trust. SCO will be immediately bankrupt. The trustee will march in and kick the current SCO management out. The trustee will agree to anything the creditors (IBM, Novell mainly) tell him. The cases will end immediately.
AllParadox, a retired lawyer who has been following the case closely, predicts that Judge K. will issue an order sanctioning SCO's lawyers. Some of them could end up being disbarred. It will serve them right. This case has been an incredible misuse of the courts.
I remember back when SCO provided a decent PC-based version of UNIX..
You're probably thinking of the Santa Cruz Operation, not these bozos at Caldera doing business as The SCO Group, after they bought Santa Cruz's Unix business and Santa Cruz changed its name to Tarantella.
SCOG (The SCO Group aka Caldera) has deliberately blurred this distinction all along.
-- Alastair