Slashdot Mirror
Appeals Court Overturns 2007 Unix Copyright Decision
snydeq writes "A federal appeals court has overturned a 2007 decision that Novell owns the Unix code, clearing the way for SCO to pursue a $1 billion copyright infringement case against IBM. In a 54-page decision (PDF), the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said it was reversing the 2007 summary judgment decision by Judge Dale Kimball of the US District Court for the District of Utah, which found that Novell was the owner of Unix and UnixWare copyrights. SCO CEO Darl McBride called the decision a 'huge validation for SCO.'" The case over who owns Unix will now go to trial in Utah.
We'll be using quantum computers before the appeals run out.
Damn, well more of these schenagigians
Thats a shame!
Did it become april fools day when I wasn't watching?
April 1st already? Seriously, WTF?
It's like a zombie infestation. Didn't scientific research recently prove that violence was the only solution to that?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090824142203182
It's important to note that the Appeals court hasn't said that the copyrights do belong to SCO. They've only found that a decision regarding copyright ownership based on the APA wasn't something that should have been decided in a summary judgment and that the decision should've been made during the jury trial.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
SCO has now morphed into those Killer Cockroaches in "Damnation Alley." Those were in Salt Lake City too. George Peppard was right!
Unfortunately these roaches don't eat rubber like in the movie, they eat money and generate litigation. The ultimate lawyer fodder.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I suppose this is the new business plan for most companies; instead of putting out product for consumers they sue one another for infringement to get profits.
...Fuck
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
SCO released a Linux distro, thereby waving any rights to pursue Linux vendors for copyright violations [at the time]. If people inserted UNIX code *after* SCO was involved then maybe there is a case...
But you can't try and release a distro, profit from it, then sue later saying the distro which you licensed under GPL included your copyrighted [non-gpl] code...
1. Stake claim to something that's widely used.
2. Appeal to death anyone who disagrees with you.
3. ????????
4. Profit!
God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home
Twank you, twank you wary mwuch
Go Eagles, Go SCO, Go Go Go !!
....all this means is it'll have to go back to trial to decide the issues. I kind of figured this would happen; Kimball's summary judgment was premature.
(yes, I skimmed through the long-ass PDF)
The same verdict as Kimball granted could potentially be reached again, this time with a full court proceeding. What it does do is delay the other cases even longer, as the Novell case decision is really required before any of them can proceed.
See you in 2012.
I would like to see the guarantees SCO's lawyers have for getting paid!
I'll go with "lolwut?"
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Read groklaw people ful decision was not over turned..Dan McBride is somewhat wrong and liar to boot
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Appeals court only determined that the contract is a mess, and cannot be interpreted on its own. The court agreed that SCO owes Novell a large portion of the
money it received from SUN , and that a full trial is required to figure out the rest. Again this is just more delay for SCO, but SCO will soon be in Trustee-ship under chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means that it is HIGHLY likely that these cases will be closed by SCO itself, and settled in favorable terms to Novell & IBM.
Darl will not be in control of SCO once the trustee is assigned, and then we'll really get to find out who's been behind this mess.
One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that there is the ownership of some code, but how much code can really be said to belong to one entity. BSD was spawned from the idea of creating a UNIX-like operating system, but was not using code from UNIX. So, when you say "UNIX", it is important to look at the code base and where each piece came from. All things considered, there are standard methods of doing things that are taught in school that may have originated from the old UNIX code, but are now considered a standard way of doing things. Can you say that everyone who uses code they have learned in school now runs the risk of copyright violation because the code may look identical to pieces of the "copyrighted" UNIX code?
This is where a lot of the problems will come from in these lawsuits from SCO. Also, if AT&T put a lot of code out into the public domain back when they owned System V, then it can't be taken back at this point. Does anyone know how much of the so-called UNIX code is actually held under the copyright at this point?
The good news is that this doesn't mean that SCO owns UNIX. It just means that the appeals court thought that SCO deserved a jury trial. SCO would need to present their evidence to a jury and convince them that SCO purchased the copyrights. Meanwhile, Novell would be shooting down SCO's arguments and presenting their own evidence. If the previous trial is any indication, SCO will stumble and delay it's way through always acting as though Novell was holding back on giving them that crucial piece of evidence that they had proving SCO's case.
The bad news is that this means more years of SCO saying "We own UNIX and, by extension, LINUX!"
The good news, however, is that Darl's lost control of SCO's rudder ( http://blogs.computerworld.com/14597/the_sco_zombie_wins_one ). The Chapter 11 court has seized control of the company and is appointing a trustee. The likely outcome is that SCO will enter Chapter 7. There, it will be ripped to shreds and sold off piece by piece.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Oh gawd, no. Please. No. Make it stop. No, really. Make this damn circus stop. How have they manage to continue this charade for this long and why are people enabling them to continue? Gawd almighty, make it stop. Please. I beg of you...
Is that you, Darl McBride?
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I, for one, can't wait to have a fantastic 'SCO IS DEAD' party when Darl's zoo finally gets thrown by the bankruptcy trustees onto history's trash dump where it, IMHO, belongs!
Just when I thought that perhaps this enormous rift in the fabric of space-time might actually seal itself and save us all from Darl McDoom, along comes an ambulance full of judges with jaws of life to tear the scar open again? What the hell Dark-Kirk parallel universe have I been sucked into here?
Note that:
1- Novell board voted not to approve sale of any UNIX copyrights before this APA deal ever was signed.
2 - Santa Cruz Operation (original SCO) never took Novell to court at all (maybe they knew that the APA and Amendment were both clear to them and that they didn't get copyrights)?
3- The original SCO (Santa Cruz Operations) never did not do a final transfer of copyright paper work from NOVELL. That paperwork never happened, and Santa Cruz Operations never changed the UNIX code to show they had registration rights to the code). So they KNEW something.
4- Santa Cruz Operations SEC filings never said they owned UNIX ever. DARL when Caldera/newSCO/The SCO group did say this in their SEC filings (why the change of tune, when the one who did the deal never declared this in SEC filings at all)?
5- DARL and newSCO (TheSCO Group who became TheSCO Group by changing their name from Caldera), asked Novell for the copyrights BEFORE trying to sue LINUX users and IBM, etc.
6 - Santa Cruz Operations after the deal only collected 5% income from sales so why did they need the deal when Santa Cruz Operations already had RIGHTS to develop a "branch of Unix", why pay more money to do the same thing? Hmm, maybe to use the LIST of licensees that they go to market something else to the list (like Tarantella)?
7 - So ask yourself why the US court system has to go thru an expensive trial on this at all?
And yes, they did do a but of modelling on the slow zombie infestation and you HAD to act hard and quick or else the zombies would win.
The BBC had something on it recently on their website.
Prince SCO: "Oh, I feel much better!"
King Novell: "Your case was butchered in the courts, you creep!"
Prince SCO: "I was saved at the last minute."
King Novell: "How?"
Prince SCO: "Well, I'll tell you."
[music begins playing, the townspeople begin dancing and singing, "He's going to tell, he's going to tell!"]
Lemon curry???
I made a call to Microsoft's customer support to let them know that I will continue to use Linux on every PC I own regardless of how many judges they buy off.
I hope you realize that you took Vikram in Bangalore way off script with that support call.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
So SCO is fully liable for payment to Novell, meaning they cannot get out of bankrupcy that easily. Ownership has not been reversed, SCO still does not own anything, that has to go to court and in the meantime SCO has to pay more money out. The question is will they continue to get investors to fund this campaign? Even if by some miracle SCO was to get the copyrights to unix, there is little if any chance they can succeed in proving any code was misappropriated by IBM. Basically all this proves is that our court system does everything in its power to make sure lawyers get all the money.
This one says "Oh good, the world isn't ending after all"
Did the moron who wrote this bunch of lies actually bother reading what happened?
Even though SCO lie in just about every press release for years why do people spout the lies they tell :(
My god, won't this thing ever end?
How can this thing keep coming back?
I am so sick of hearing about it.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Why doesn't Novell just buy out SCO. That would end the whole thing. Of course SCO won't go quietly so they need to buy out as much stock as they can first.
It is quite clear that all along in history, violence solved a lot of problem. Solved them very definitively. It might have created other, or ultimately led to the end of the offender, but the original problem was mostly solved, even if it involved putting to the sword the whole populace, including children, and then salting their fields.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I wonder if this SCO business will resolve itself before Duke Nukem Forever is released...
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
Actual facts:
1/ The ruling leaves SCO owing Novell $2.5 Million + Interest.
2/ The rest of the case (including copyright ownership) goes to a jury trial.
3/ If SCO somehow wins they get no money.
4/ SCO then gets to go ahead with the IBM lawsuit which they were losing badly.
5/ The SCO management has been ordered (by the bankruptcy judge) to be replaced by a trustee. A trustee who may or may not continue the lawsuits. He/she may choose to try and negotiate a way out to stop the bleeding.
6/ After the SCO vs Novell trial if the trustee pursues it there is still the IBM trial.
So the trustee has a problem. The company money is owed to Novell and they don't have the cash to continue until the case goes to trial (which will be delayed due to the new judge needing time to come up to speed).
Only then can they go on with the IBM trial. To make money off the IBM trial they need to have won on the key issues in the Novell trial (copyright and right to waive), they also need to beat the IBM lawyers (who are not nicknamed the Nazgul for nothing).
Even if somehow the trustee can be persuaded to fight these cases and manages to win what are the odds that neither Novell or IBM would appeal? What are the chances that SCO can survive long enough to fight through the appeals if it comes to that?
At most this is a lesser defeat for SCO. So long as they owe Novell the money and still have to fight the trial they are still doomed. The chances that the trustee would be willing to keep the company bleeding to fight dubious lawsuits is pretty low.
Nah, even the ordinary Naz aren't enough here. Companies as big as IBM always have a scary "Iridium Team" or such. You know, one guy is 6'11" with the eidetic memory who serves as the walking caselaw and the bombshell woman with the 228 IQ to run the speeches. They only serve one case per year and charge $666 per hour, but they end the nonsense.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!
No, this cannot be!
Now we're at the mercy of a twelve-pack of idiots who hold linux's future in their palms?
I would rather trust engineers with my life, and that's saying something.
Okay, that got a good chuckle out of me - wish I had mod points...
Asimov was not a scientist, only a science fiction writer.
Trouble ticket status: CLOSED
Accepted solution: REBOOT
The judgement concludes that the issue ought to go to trial, NOT that SCO owns the copyright. It also concludes that royalties due to Novell are still due.
The debate within the 50 page judgment is mostly about the wording of the contracts. The wording of the transfer of ownership is indirect and vague.
What is interesting is that the signatories both agree that the INTENTION AT THE TIME was to fully transfer copyright ownership of Unix. California law however prohibits this fact as admissible evidence. It is truly curious that lawyers chose to express this in a way that could have been open to debate!!
Perhaps Novell was deliberately leaving a backdoor open - ???
-paul
@@@ never ascribe to conspiracy what can more easily be explained by ineptitude @@@
fund the lawsuit to try and kill the superior competition AGAIN??
I wish I had mod points. I'd mod this post funny!
I would have thought that most people would conside professors of biochemistry to be scientists...
Damn, this thing is epic, I imagine a 1000 years from now, in some holy state of Linuxia, this whole story will be recorded in some holy document or the other!
If MS is still threatened (which they are), then money will flow to SCO. Likewise, if McNealy is working for Oracle, then Oracle will quietly fund it, and then deny it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I hope you realize that you took Vikram in Bangalore way off script with that support call.
No, although the guy did have a strong Indian accent, he said his name was Steve. He also referred me to his manager, (also named Steve, incidentally), and HIS manager (Steve, again). They had to be in the US. What are the odds of all three guys being named Steve in India?
where the hell SCO is getting the money from to pay for a decade of litigation. How has SCO managed to survive two recessions and continue to base a business model solely around endless litigation? Dear SCO: I have a great idea for a futile court case, who is your angel investor? PS: Your money would have been better spent hiring engineers and developing new products.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
This case is looking more and more like the case that drags on in Charles Dickens' Bleak House.
-- Cheers!
No, it's 4th. Just ask the guy with the "4 boxes to defend liberty" thing in his sig.
(For yuks, anyone who had code in the GNU/Linux kernel or even on the disk SCO shipped back in the Caldera days should have standing to ask about this claim. But that assumes one actually wants to stand up for one's rights.)
Then was Novell at all able to 'settle' the BSD/AT&T lawsuit? Ya can't settle what you don't own. For that matter, if USL was the 'owner', how could said 'owner' not be aware of the BSD/Novell settlement where Novell acted like they WERE the owner?
article about said settlement
(Also, I have a hard time accepting that Bell Labs would have written a 'confusing contract' for a lack of access to money and talent to obtain a clear contract.)
There's a story in a book - I think it's called "The Million Dollar Lawyers" - about a company that was fighting IBM in court. One lawyer looked out the window and saw a huge funeral procession - lots of limos, a continuous parade of black limousines - going down the street, and remarked to his fellow lawyer, "Wow, that's some funeral, I wonder who it was."
The other lawyer just snorted and said, "Funeral, hell, that's just the IBM legal department returning from lunch."
Well, if we make enough calls like that, eventually they are going to have to add one more case to the script. So there.
What the hell? SCO really was pining for the fjords?
In all the twists this long saga has taken, did anyone ever ask what Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (the guys who actually *wrote* Unix) thought about all this brouhaha? I know, they were Bellcore/AT&T employees, and that AT&T owned it, etc., etc., but I'm sort of just curious what they have to say about all this fighting over something they wrote*.
* I also acknowledge that there were lots of other people who had a major, major hand in writing Unix; but the history books say they were really the first ones (Ken Thompson, specifically).
The Summary Judgement was vacated because it was felt that a trial would have been more appropriate as the APA is vague enough that establishing what rights SCO needed to be able to carry out its tasks is not clear. It basically went back to "GO!"
It's trivially easy to make up cases where violence cannot be avoided.
For example, Bob the bomber is about to press a button that will caused hundreds of deaths. Sam the sharpshooter is in position to kill Bob. Should Sam shoot? Either way, violence is committed.
I don't know if it's the mostly American readership (a nation known for preferring violence over sex), but almost nobody here seems to understand that quote. It doesn't mean "only the incompetent use violence as the last resort", or "wars are wrong and everybody should love each other". It is not a pacifist maxim; It's more a reflection on the means of conflict. It means "if you use violence, it will be the last thing you do, and will prove your incompetence to handle the situation". The Foundation books made it clear that Asimov's definition of violence did not include things like armed deterrence, espionage, psychological manipulation, or even assassination if it meant avoiding a large scale conflict. It meant direct physical violence that results in death of people or destruction of property. In that light, violence is a proof of incompetence, because a competent leader would be able to take over the people and property to use them to his own ends, rather than destroying them.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Except that SCO will shortly be run by a court-appointed Chapter 11 Trustee, most likely a lawyer or retired judge. There's very little chance such a one would go along with that sort of unethical, potentially unlawful, behavior. In fact, there's very little chance the trustee will elect to further pursue pointless and doomed litigation that simply dissipates the bankruptcy estate's remaining assets, either. Not being blinded by greed and mythical beelions of dollars, the trustee (appointed, don't forget, by a not-very-sympathetic Trustee's Office) will do the logical thing: settle both IBM and Novell cases as fast and cheaply as possible, preserve as much assets as possible, then -- seeing that Chapter 11 rehabilitation is impossible -- convert to Chapter 7 and sell off the office furniture for curios and the e-mail records to the highest bidder. (Actually, I'd expect IBM to demand custody of all corporate documents as part of any settlement offer...)
SCO is toast. Look for MS to employ a new and different cat's-paw now that this one has been run into the ground.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
The ruling says that the ownership is REMANDED to a jury trial. In otherwords that the ownership is currently not decided by the courts. They both claim ownership but a jury must decide.
Nothing in the case was decided in SCOs favour. What was decided was that certain issues (such as copyright ownership) were to be decided by a jury trial not by summary judgment as had been done. At most this means that SCO might possibly in the future get a beneficial ruling from a jury.
To have a chance at collecting money they need to win two things in SCO vs Novell.
1/ Copyright ownership
2/ Demonstrate that the contractual right to waive does not apply to SCO vs IBM.
SCO avoided showing any solid evidence in SCO vs IBM and at this point all that really is left in that case is IBMs counter claims against SCO.
Please provide for us the "solid evidence" that you claim SCO has. They seem to have lost both Blepps briefcase and the "MIT Deep Divers". IBM on the other hand presented such things as the internal SCO memo stating they couldn't find ANY infringements.
The trustee will have access to the evidence. Time will tell what he thinks of it. Where have SCOs investors been during the bankruptcy case? They could have picked up a large part of ownership of the company for a relative song if they KNEW that the evidence was "solid" as you claim.
At present SCO is strongly positioned in SCO vs IBM to be ripped apart and fed to the carrion birds. They MUST win the 2 issues mentioned above even to have a chance of winning SOMETHING in SCO vs IBM.
Time will tell. I am sure that if SCO had the "solid evidence" the trials would have ended years ago in SCOs favour. Yet they haven't.
SCO vs Daimler Chrylser lost
SCO vs Novell partly lost (and they owe Novell $millions$) and partly waiting for trial.
SCO in bankruptcy protection without the money to survive the time required for the legal figtht.
If the linux community is so confident in their innocence, why am I being moderated as a "troll"? You guys ignore the facts and attack anyone who dares point them out. You are the liberals of the computer industry.
You mean Head Baltar and Head Six??? I KNEW THEY WERE REAL!
I'm willing to listen to the facts, and I never modded you a troll. What code in Unix was placed into Linux? I want the file names and line numbers of the Unix code, and the file names and line numbers where it was injected into Linux. If SCO presented that evidence in discovery, please point me to the filing.
Molog
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
ORLY?
Clarice the cocksucker is sent in to pacify Bob and while he is distracted, Eric the electrician cuts the wires rendering the button ineffective.
Peace and Love, Man. Its all you need..
Bomb the Bomber is already resorting to violence, which means the system is already to the lowest possible denominator, nice try.
We're confident of the innocence because SCO never actually showed any infringing code, and kept changing what they were claiming throughout the whole discovery process. At best they seemed to be hoping that IBM would provide them with evidence.
How long did discovery go on, something like two years? In two whole fucking years they provided nothing, no evidence of any kind, and in fact, managed to get them embroiled in an entirely different case about ownership.
I openly challenge you to provide any of the alleged infringing code.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Pitchfork. $25
Torches. $10
Angry Villagers. Priceless.
For everything else there's Groklaw. Don't surf the Net without it...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Are you sure it wasn't an australian accent, and the guys were all named Bruce?
- Peder
Go slit your fucking wrists fucktard
That's it, little coward, run away.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Will this ever end? When do they bring back ATT and Berkeley to fight again as collateral damage?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Brilliant troll. It was believable right up to the point when you said that Rob Enderle was a "voice of reason."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
So? The quote was straightforward and stated that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent. If you're going to start saying that certain situations don't apply, then the statement is wrong. And it is wrong, because it's based in a fantasy world where people can be made to act rationally at an author's will. Reality is not that simple.
When the last refuge is reached, there's no point in holding out primo
And secundo, the quote is about war, offing bomb the bomber, if it averts war, is the solution that goes with it.
The Santa Cruz Organisation could not afford the full price, so the copyrights were left out and the price was dropped. There is a record of the Novell board deciding that the copyrights were not to be sold. Although there is ambiguity in the APA with the amendment, there is no specific list of the copyrights to be transferred which would be needed if a copyright took place. Also that would only get the copyrights as far as the Santa Cruz Organistaion, not to Caldera who became SCO...that would require another transfer.
Then not the least problem is that the old BSD settlement left considerable uncertainty as to what copyrights USL actually owned anyway. Some of the copyrights almost certainly belong to third parties. This is probably why the parties avoided specifying them in detail...they actually don't really know what they own.
The question is will they continue to get investors to fund this campaign?
Yes.
I believe someone will front the cash, because otherwise it will be too embarrassing to certain special interest groups.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
IANAL, but I actually read the whole document. The appeals court concluded that the summary judgment granting Unix copyright to Novell was wrong and a trial is required. However, if you read the whole judgment, you will get a feeling that the judge is trying to say that SCO has better claims on Unix copyright than Novell (however, the court didn't have authority to make that decision). So if SCO proceeds with the trial there is a good chance that it might win. Will it get funding to pursue the trial? The judge didn't say anything about it and I hope it doesn't.
Absolutely. The guy sounded like Rajesh Koothrappali FFS.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
District Court: The contract is too ambiguous to have transferred copyrights by itself. Case Closed.
Appeals Court: The contract is too ambiguous to have this case closed by summary judgement. Case Remanded.
The hypothetical situation with Bob the bomber and Sam the sharpshooter actually illustrates the point nicely. The fact that its come down to Sam or Bob committing violence means that negotiating and other non-violent tactics have failed. In other words, the people running the show did not have the competence required to defuse the situation so its come down to snipe or explodey.
"never did not do a final transfer of copyright"
Can you explain your double negative to us?
=S
Cowards are fuckwards like you since they love communism so much.
Penguins already come pre-installed with cool Tuxedos. Maybe it's time to give them sniper rifles?
Greedy F'ing Pigs, and pleanty of 'em. Where do i resign the human race?
I feel for the jury. Those poor people will have a fair chunk of their time forceably wasted presiding over the long overdue demise of SCO.
What is your organization? Mo's & Joe's hand car washers?
I know of big corporate names that have Linux on the desktop today.
If they are not worried about SCO there is no reason why anybody else should.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.