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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."
Die! Die! Die! Why won't you just fuckin die?!?!
It is the final chapter however.
As an issue of fact, the ownership of the UNIX copyrights is not very open for appeal unless something screwy happens.
Unfortunately, having the issue decided by twelve idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty, and who probably further got picked clean of any sanity during voir dire doesn't cut it.
The jury portion of the trial started on March 8 (link is to a PDF).
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
I don't know about Linux, but BSD definitely contained Unix code from USL, and vice-versa. They settled out of court. Should ever SCO decided to go after BSD, it would open a big can of worms. More details can be found in The Unix Heritage Society and Bitsavers Archives.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
and the jury will return a verdict by Tuesday?
No. One of the jurors had a vacation or something planned for this weekend and won't be back until Monday.
Because of that, the judge agreed that the jury didn't have to reconvene until Tuesday.
So there will be no verdict until Tuesday at the earliest.
Actually, it is the original Novell case.
The March 8th date was just the date the appeals system remand-booted it back down to the trial court level.
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.
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
sounds frightening doesn't it? hence the reason SCO didn't even think about attacking BSD, and instead went after linux users like IBM, because IBM was soft in comparision even though i believe there is a quote from IBM somewhere that states they will "turn the skies over utha black with lawyers" before they let SCO win.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
1. Since settlement was not disclosed at the time, BSD development continued with 4.4-Lite, that was specifically created to exclude everything that was disputed with USL.
2. This can of worms WAS opened during SCO saga, and resulted in the whole thing being disclosed to the publuc. Basically, USL secretly agreed to stop being a bunch of assholes.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Not to mention OpenSolaris, which because of the SVR4 code, Sun had to ask permission from SCO in 2003 before they could open source. After the ruling that Novell really owned the SVR4 code, Judge Dale Kimball wrote that: "In this case, Sun obtained the rights to opensource Solaris, and SCO received the revenue for granting such rights even though such rights remained with Novell. If the court were to declare that the contract was void and should be set aside, the court could not return the parties to the same position they were in prior to the 2003 Agreement. Sun has already received the benefits of the agreement and developed and marketed a product based on those benefits. There was also evidence at trial that OpenSolaris directly competed with Novell’s interest. The court, therefore, cannot merely void the contract."
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.
I think they did not go after BSD as Microsoft uses (has used) BSD. They do not care about the rest. And rightfully so. You should go after somebody if you think you are in the right not based on the quality of the lawyers. Because that would mean your legal system is completely fucked up.
If that would be the case, say a big music consortium could go after individuals and just take whatever they want. That would never ..., oh, wait, never mind.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
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.