Did SCO Get Linux-mob Justice?

An anonymous reader writes "According to Fortune's legal blogger Roger Parloff, "once in awhile a judicial ruling comes down that's so wrong at such a basic level that you're just left scratching your head". He claims that Judge Kimball's "102-page ruling (about SCO) was greeted with widespread rejoicing and I-told-you-so's", but "the problem is not that Judge Kimball's view of the facts is wrong". Was the ruling unfair?"

Comments

unfair?

[gEvil (beta)]

Was the ruling unfair?

Hmmm, I can't think of a more appropriate place to ask that question...

Nope

[$RANDOMLUSER]

SCO (and Darl in particular) didn't get enough mob justice. I'm thinking keelhauling is about right.

Link to said ruling

[oahazmatt]

Link to said ruling

No.

[Scareduck]

His hyperventilation amounts to ignoring SCO's inflated claims of ownership to everything, failure to prove they owned what they claimed -- which, by the way, they were never able to show in court what it was that they claimed they owned! This is legal wankery at its lowest, folks. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Re:No.

[trolltalk.com]

The right to a jury trial is not universal. A jury is only needed if there are questions of fact to be decided - juries decide facts, judges decide the application of laws.

In this case, the law was quite clear - without a written transfer of copyright, there were no facts in question for a jury to decide, just the application of the law, which is for a judge.

SCO's theory of an "implied transfer of copyright", without citing a single legal statute, or a judgement or precedent that was not later reversed on appeal, left no legal basis for a jury trial.

Re:No.

[NMerriam]

Well, TFA seems to disagree with your interpretation

Well, TFA is a troll who doesn't know what he's talking about. Copyright law is very, very, VERY clear on this -- there is no such thing as a transfer of copyright unless there is a written, explicit transfer of copyright. And even then, there are situations where explicit transfers can be made null and void, and situations where transfers can be undone years after the fact.

Basically the writer is claiming that the judge is somehow obligated to entertain a novel new legal theory with no basis in law, and that it is "unfair" for the judge to rule on the law as it is clearly written.

Re:No.

[N1ck0]

Looking at other IP court cases can lead one to believe that SCO was treated differently from other companies. If SCO sued Average Little Company Technologies Inc they may have been able to put on a good show and have a decent chance of winning. But SCO didn't sue a small company, they sued IBM, RedHat, Novell, etc and when you take a large corporation to court and provide no evidence, and use extortion style tactics on those corporation's customers, the corporation is going to fight back.

Did SCO get a black eye from the fight? Yes
Might SCO have got away clean if it was a smaller company? Yes
Is it right that this same dance in a courtroom could have defeated a smaller company? No
Should you expect to get hurt when you wage war with large amounts of people and companies? Yes

Was SCO Treated unfairly? No! If you present no evidence, and base most of your case on false assumptions the law is quite clear that you should loose. And when you base all your financials on something you should loose, you go bust.

No A$$hole Rule

[vinn]

Anyone ever hear of the book "No Asshole Rule"? It applies to hiring and firing staff (and if you're a manager you should probably browse through it.) On a real gut level I think corporations should abide by the ideas in that book. If you can't play nice in the playground with the other kids, you deserve to get your face punched in. Similarly, if you build your business on open source software, you play nice by going to the software developers and saying, "We think you're infringing this IP.. can you work with us to fix that?" If you wanna be the asshole that goes around suing everyone, blatantly lying to the press, and tell Wall Street another set of lies then you deserve to file bankruptcy.

Yodeling

[Roadmaster]

It looks as if this guy believes the judge plainly shouldn't have ruled on the issues he did. I think he should put his money where his mouth is and, pro-bono, file an appeal on SCO's behalf reverting Kimball's decision and repeating the entire 5-year process. My guess is he won't; a good way to generate buzz about your writings is to be on the opposing side of a losing argument, and doing your best to confound things and give reasonings as to why everybody else (against SCO) is wrong. I believe this behavior is known in certain circles as "trolling". That, folks, is why everybody hates lawyers; they just complicate things and can make a problem many times worse, all while taking 5 years to do it.

He seems to have missed the point

[terrymr]

As I understand it copyrights can only be transferred by contract where there is explicit language transferring the copyright. Sco was arguing for an "implied" transfer which as far as I know isn't allowed in copyright law. Therefore everybody's testimony is irrelevant absent an agreement which explicitly transfered the copyrights to Sco.

Caldera knew this when they bought the unix business from the Santa Cruz Operation - They were asked if they planned to opensource unix at the conference call and said they'd like to but didn't have the necessary copyrights to do so.

Article date: September 10, 2007, 6:14 am

[Anonymous Coward]

• That blog article is almost three months old: September 2007.
• That blog article has a provocative title but little substance.
• That blog article is horribly biased.
• That blog article claims that Judge Kimball did not know what he was talking about (especially regarding the APA), while he was praised by others (who are not part of the "Linux-mob") for this deep analysis of the facts.

That blog article is just old FUD.

"Mob justice" Good grief!

[dogsbreath]

SCO has had several years in court and nothing that they have come up with in terms of a legal theory to support their position has had any lift to it. This is hardly "mob justice". If anything, there should be complaints that Judge K give them too much slack.

It is about time that the slow turning wheels of justice move to end the long suffering of IBM, Novell, the linux community, and open source in general.

Since when?...

[msauve]

Since Darl figured out how to create a slashdot account.

Re:Since when?...

[trolltalk.com]

I'm just amazed at how many supposedly-knowledgeable people continue to fall for what is utter BS. Anyone reading the comments posted to the article within hours of its' first appearance would have seen the whole thing torn apart - in particular, the legal requirement for a transfer of copywrite to include a written transfer, and that, withut that, judge Kimball could NOT rule in favour of SCO even if he wanted to.

This is the same level of "journalism" as pretendrle and mogtroll. Uninformed. Ditto with all those "analysts" who also came out with buy recommendations, talking through their goatse.cx orifices.

The one thing this experience has taught is that many and "analyst", "journalist", "expert" or "lawyer" is just another opinionated asshole, too lazy to do any fact-checking.

1. Boies could have checked the facts and told SCO "you have no case."
2. All the analysts could have checked the facts and told the world "SCO has no case."

While the average slashdotter may not be a lawyer, we seem to have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than many of the "experts". Why? Because we write code, and we know the consequences of overlooking a missed semicolon, a typo, or starting from wrong assumptions. Lawyers, on the other hand, don't have a financial incentive to give good advice or dig too deeply when it means generating less revenue.

Shakespeare had it right. "First, we kill all the lawyers."

Re:Since when?...

[Frosty Piss]

The one thing this experience has taught is that many and "analyst", "journalist", "expert" or "lawyer" is just another opinionated asshole, too lazy to do any fact-checking.

1. Boies could have checked the facts and told SCO "you have no case."

2. All the analysts could have checked the facts and told the world "SCO has no case."

You seem to make the assumption that Boies and the analysts didn't know, where ignorant of the fact that SCO "had no case". Sometimes it may seem like these people are idiots, but the thing to remember is that they all have vested interests.

Take Boies: He's a lawyer, and lawyers represent guilty people all the time. Most lawyers are essentially mercenaries. The same thing can be said for so-called "analysts", most of whom are fare from "independent". The same goes for "journalists", who, contrary to what they would like you to think, are far from analytically unbiased.

My point is that you suggest all these talking heads are "too lazy to do any fact-checking" and in general ignorant of the facts. I think you are wrong, I think the facts are obvious, and we must look to other, self-serving reasons for their various proclamations.

Re:Since when?...

[trolltalk.com]

Three points:

1. Copyright law REQUIRES that all transfers be in writing. The parties can't agree to do a work-around.
2. The APA specifically excluded copyrights, since Santa Cruz didn't have enough $$$ to buy everything.
3. SCO obviously didn't believe that the copyrights had transferred, because before they filed their suit against IBM, they repeatedly asked Novell to transfer them.

The whole thing was a stock scam.

Re:Since when?...

[ArtDent]

I have only looked at the excerpts of the contract included in TFA, but I don't see where people are getting the obvious conclusion that the copyright was not transferred in writing.

And that's the problem. The article utterly mischaracterizes the language in the APA.

If you interpret the language from the contract that says Novell is transferring "all rights and ownership of UNIX ... including source code . . ., such assets to include without limitation" as including the copyright...

But you can't interpret the language that way because that very sentence is followed by...

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Assets to be so purchased shall not include those assets (the "Excluded Assets") set forth on Schedule 1.1 (b).

And Schedule 1.1 (b) specifically lists the following...

V. Intellectual Property:
A. All copyrights and trademarks, except for the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare.
B. All Patents

There's no ambiguity. The contract basically says, "I give you everything in set A, excluding those things that are in set B." You're arguing that set A is really big, but that doesn't matter at all. The thing that they want is specifically enumerated in set B, so it's excluded.

Then there's some frantic spinning to try to suggest that because pretty much everything in items I through IV of the Excluded Assets specifically refers to NetWare, obviously "All copyrights" must mean only NetWare copyrights, too. Of course, that's nonsense: the fact that "NetWare" is repeated in every item that refers specifically to NetWare suggests that this item most certainly does not refer to NetWare. Moreover, "the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare" clearly do not refer to NetWare, so why would "All copyrights"? And a final kicker, SCO does not claim (and has never claimed) to have received any patents from the APA, while patents are excluded in precisely the same manner as copyrights.

The arguments presented in the article are bogus: they were already offered to the court, and were resoundingly rejected.

Re:Since when?...

[trolltalk.com]

Unfortunately, the author of TFA is a known SCOtroll, like the mogtroll, lyin' lyons, and pretenderle, and chose not to include in his citation the list of rights specificially excluded; that list excludes the copyright transfers.

Originally, Santa Cruz (not Caldera (later to change their name to SCO), who only bought a part of Santa Cruz - the rest became Tarantella) was supposed to buy everything, but they didn't have the money. So, they paid a lesser amount to became Novell's agent in the handling of the Unix licenses, passing on 100% of the revenue, and Novell then remitting them a 5% fee.

This is why Ransom Love (head of Caldera, before the name change) stated that Caldera couldn't open source Unix - others held the copyrights.

SCO, as supposedly Caldera's "successor in interest", (but not Santa Cruz's successor in interest, as they did NOT buy out all of Santa Cruz, contrary to the FUD they have been spreading - just some of the assets) should have known this; the lawsuits were predictably as DOA as the rebadged Maxtor drives from the China factory currently being sold by Seagate.

Re:Some of the things that get glazed over...

[gnasher719]

There are a few things that you are missing:

1. Yes, Novell always wanted to sell the whole business including copyrights. Unfortunately, SCO's predecessor didn't have the money to afford paying for the copyrights, so the copyrights were excluded. So the question that the CEO was asked isn't the one that counts: He was asked "what was your intention to sell". He was not asked "and what _did_ you actually sell". 2. Novell and SCO signed a contract. And that contract is absolutely one hundred percent clear: Copyrights were not included. That's what the words of the contract say. Now the wording of the contract is undisputed. SCO can argue as much as they want what the contract _means_, but there is no disagreement about the text. As the text of the contract is undisputed, the judge can and must decide what the contract means as a matter of law. No jury required, no jury actually allowed because there are no disputed facts. With the written contract available, there is no need for any witnesses. Actually, the judge is required by law to _ignore_ all witnesses that contradict the clear text of the contract. TFA claims that "nobody remembers anymore what the contract means". That is nonsense. The text of the contract is available, so you just give it to the judge to read and the judge will tell exactly what it means. That's why you write down contracts, so that you don't rely on people's memories.

3. Even if a contract claims to sell the copyrights, copyrights need to be transferred by a separate transfer document. That is a legal requirement. As SCO cannot show such a transfer document, Novell still holds the copyrights. Now SCO could have tried to sue Novell to have the copyrights transferred, but they haven't. The copyrights are Novell's until Novell signs a transfer document, no matter what the contract says.

Rubbish.

[Jaywalk]

Starting from the deliberately inflammatory headline -- note that he never tries to explain how a ruling by a District Court judge after three years of trial amounts to "mob justice" -- Parloff is scrounging for a pro-SCO angle here. He finally settles on this:

And as any second-semester law student knows, a judge can grant such a motion only when, as innumerable courts in every state and federal jurisdiction have repeatedly written, "the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion [i.e., SCO, in this situation], shows there are no genuine issues of material fact."

That's right, as far as it goes. Kimball actually said that SCO didn't have any genuine issues of material fact on their side. Parloff then goes on to pull up some stuff he thinks qualifies as "issues of material fact":

The then-CEOs of both Santa Cruz and Novell (yes, of Novell too) each supported SCO's position in their testimony -- i.e., the position Judge Kimball rejected without even letting a jury hear it.

True enough. The trouble is that the CEOs weren't involved in writing that contract. All the lawyers who were actually involved (on both sides) agreed with Novell. As did all the contemporaneous documents.

But the key issue is that none of that matters. The contract has specific language, called an "integration clause" saying that only what's in the contract matters. Anything outside the contract, like who remembers what, is irrelevant. The contract cannot possibly be read to say that SCO owns the copyrights because the contract explicitly says that copyrights are not to be transferred. Parloff actually touches on this near the bottom of his article, but then dismisses it based on SCO's argument that -- elsewhere in the contract -- it says "all rights and ownership". Now he's just being coy because the actual wording is something more like "all rights and ownership, except those included in section X". And copyright law is very explicit about the kind of language you have to use to transfer copyrights.

It's not always possible to tell a shill from an honest journalist, but SCO and their obvious shills (like Maureen O'Gara) started making claims that Kimball was legally incompetent and often overturned on appeal (not true) at about the same time Parloff came up with this bit of legal opinion. None of the regular press came to the same conclusion. Since he's playing the same riff, I'm guessing he's with the band.

Re:Don't forget...

[cooley]

and we knew who we weeeeere then,
trolls were trolls, and girls were men,
you know we could use a man like CleverNickName again
Everyone would moderate,
then take a break to masturbate
Gee, our old Slashcode ran great
THOSE...WERE...THE...DAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYSSS

Re:hmm

[gnasher719]

I suspect very few of the "call the Waaaambulance" type people here have actually read the article. There's actually quite compelling evidence of shady or unfair goings on in that trial. Completely striking the testimony of one of the main negotiators because of a family member with vested interests (having a wife work at one company is worse than you working for another company?) does seem extremely odd. It's not even slight testimony, it essentially was confirmation that SCO were told and led to believe they had ownership of Unix rights. Although this testimony could've had holes picked in, to completely discount something so incredibly important to the case is odd. You haven't followed this case, have you?

There is an absolutely, one hundred percent clear contract between Novell and SCO: The contract says "Novell sells the business to SCO, excluding any copyrights". That's what the contract says. Sure, Novell _intended_ to sell the copyrights as well, but SCO didn't have the money for that. SCO's witnesses were excluded for a very good reason: The contract is absolutely clear. It means what it says. Any witness that says otherwise can and must be ignored. That's what the law actually says: Any witness contradicting the meaning of a written contract must be ignored.

SCO was never "told and led to believe they had ownership of Unix rights". They tried to buy these rights. Novell wanted to sell them. SCO didn't have the money.

Just yesterday I went to a shop selling 50 inch LCD TVs. I wanted to buy one. I said "would you sell that TV to me"? They said "Of course, absolutely yes". I said "How much is it?" They said "$3,000". I said "Umph. I've only got $200". I left the shop with a tiny 15" TV. But I have a dozen witnesses that I wanted to buy the 50" one, and they can all confirm that the shop wanted to sell me one. Even the shop assistant and his manager witnessed under oath that they wanted to sell me a 50" TV. So surely I have the right to get that TV for my $200?

Re:Why Are People Angry At The Author?

[NMerriam]

He actually makes a good point. From a legal standpoint, the judge (most likely) should not have granted Novell's motion for a summary judgment. The judge (probably) should have let the matter go to trial. From a "rules of the bench/bar" standpoint, the author is probably correct.

No, he doesn't make a good point. Judges are under no obligation to entertain novel new legal theories for years on end in their courtroom. The case was based on copyright, which requires explicit written transfer. There was no explicit written transfer of copyright, therefore there was no reason for the trial to go forward.

good point

[taniwha]

it's the BSD guys who have the pitchforks