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SCO v. Novell Goes To the Jury
Excelcia writes "Closing arguments in the six and a bit year old slander of title case between SCO and Novell occurred today and the case is finally in the hands of the jury. It's been an interesting case, with SCO alternately claiming that the copyrights to UNIX did get transferred to them, and that the copyrights should have been transferred to them. 'Judge Ted Stewart said, after the jury left to begin to deliberate, that in all his years on the bench, he's never seen such fine lawyering as in this case.' We're not going to find out the results until at least Tuesday, however, as one juror is taking a long weekend. Great lawyering notwithstanding, we can all hope next week that the Energizer bunny of all spurious lawsuits will finally go away."
It's about bloody time
And here I was thinking it had already gone away... Silly me.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
Die! Die! Die! Why won't you just fuckin die?!?!
super fine lawyering and the jury will return a verdict by Tuesday? Hmmmm... me thinks the case was already decided long ago. For whom? We shall see.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Prediction: SCO will suffer a crushing defeat, and then the appeal machinery will start humming again. The final words in this judicial failure will not be said for decades yet.
Linux and the BSDs have pretty much made UNIX obsolete. Why spend so much money fighting over something so fucking worthless and anachronistic?
You know, Futurama's 'simple country lawyer chicken'...
It's highly unlikely they let anyone on the jury that has heard of Linux, must less understand what it stands for. Heck, they definitely never heard of SCO and unlikely heard of Novell. Maybe it'll come down to which side had the most people that look like native people of Utah (Mormons, not indigenous natives).
Can you imagine having to sit through SIX YEARS of a case? The last time I was summoned for jury duty it took three days until I was dismissed from selection and I was already pissed at everyone involved for wasting my time.
incarceration for SCO :p
Die. Die. Die.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Will we see copyright infringements suddenly popping up on program names like cd, mkdir, netstat, or ping regardless of the differences in source code? Will sysv now be a copy-written software design that could be held to some stupid software patent? All this just because a telco wrote some names in code.
Can we trust Novell, with their financially romantic relationship with Microsoft to remain active in the Open Source community or will they become the replacement for the litigious SCO which was backed into this action with money from Redmond in the first place?
Stay tuned Penguins the wrath of Mount Rainier shall not be assuaged until the Ring formed in Redmond is thrown into the fires of mountain.
Huzzah to groklaw, and 'good grief, jurors.'
I participated last year on a jury trial that lasted 3wks. I really cannot imagine trying to stay attentive and take good juror notes, for six years!
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
This is just the beginning!
Does anyone even Run SCO UNIX in production anymore.
The language of the courtroom is a mix of legal jargon and programmer jargon, glued together with the English of people who went to graduate school. To the jury it's a bunch of babble.
Once you ignore all that, you're left with a sob story. The little guy is hurt. Obviously, money is required. People don't sue unless somebody else did something bad, and the trial only requires a likelyhood for a win, so there you go. SCO wins.
There is a reason SCO demanded a jury.
For the lawyers in this case.
The IP case that just would not die...
I'll bet that they find a way to keep extending it even longer.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Basically the way this case went was:
1) Both sides file a bunch of pre-trial motions....
2) SCO loses. Case gets thrown out without prejudice
3) SCO refiles.
4) Wash, rinse, repeat
5) SCO loses key pre-trial motions, files for bankrupcy.
6) SCO puts this case on hold via bankrupcy court.
7) Eventually, six years later, it actually gets before a jury.
Six years was the period of legal struggle. Depending on how you count this case (whether re-filing counts as a new case, for example), this case is not even six years old.... However the whole struggle.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
if you want to know how long this will go on, follow the money trail that feeds the lawyers. As long as they have a chance to make a buck, it will continue indefinitely. When the $ dry up, it will end. End of story.
Such a case... and you can retire.
I think that the facts of the case clearly support Novell.
I think that Novell should win for multiple reasons:
1/ that the copyrights did not transfer to the S.C.O.
2/ that NewSCO tried to get Novell to assign the copyrights, that Novell didn't want to do so and therefore NewSCO took Novell to court in an attempt to take the copyrights from Novell.
3/ that NewSCO has been such a slimy corporation and has been so malicious to Novell that NewSCO doesn't deserve to get the copyrights.
HOWEVER, I think that given the jury may consist of persons who may be lacking in education, and may potentially be scammers themselves (you can't tell what the predisposition of any jury person is due to not actually knowing who they are and what their background is) there is at least a chance that NewSCO's lawyers may have been able to pull the wool down far enough so that at least one person on the Jury might just have believed NewSCO's pathetic bleating.
I agree - such a stupid case as this could only ever have been strung out this long in the USA. Every country that actually has a savvy and just legal system would have thrown out this case as having no chance of success and therefore not worth following through.
Since this lawsuit started...
I got an undergraduate degree in math.
I got a master's degree in physics.
I got a doctoral degree in physics.
I got a dog and a cat.
I meet a wonderful woman.
I married her.
Although I truly want to see SCO pommelled into the ground, I have a niggling doubt that this may go in SCO's favour. Put it down to me having some distrust in the ability to juries, especially in complicated cases such as this. I hope I'm wrong.
My web domain.
You were reading Slashdot all these years.
All what you claim above becomes thusly highly implausible (wonderful woman? Married? Yeah sure, pull the other one).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.