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SCO Asks Judge To Give Them the Unix Copyright
Raul654 writes "In March, the jury in the Novell/SCO case found that Novell owns the copyright to Unix. Now, SCO's lawyers have asked judge Ted Stewart to order Novell to turn over the Unix copyright to them. 'SCO contends the jury did not answer the specific issue before Stewart that involves a legal principle called "specific performance," under which a party can ask a court to order another party to fulfill an aspect of an agreement.'" Over at Groklaw, PJ is deep into a community project to annotate SCO's filing. It's for the benefit of future historians, but it makes amusing reading now.
The original SCO is now Tarantella, who is now owned by Oracle.
This current litigious incarnation is what is left of Caldera.
It's actually really funny they chose that name, since a Caldera is actually the remains of a formerly-functional volcano. They occasionally emit smoke, but that's about it.
Ineffective assistance of counsel is basically never grounds for an appeal in a civil case, as this is. That one is pretty much reserved for criminal convictions, and even then if you choose your own lawyer it's a tough thing to get a court to agree with. But you would definitely have grounds for a legal malpractice claim if a lawyer intentionally lost your case.
Turning to the case actually going on here, what SCO filed is a proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. This is a document familiar to any civil litigator, as it's what you want the judge to sign off on either after a bench trial or after a jury returns its verdict in a complicated matter such as this one. It's not more litigation or anything, it's just SCO's post-verdict filing for the court to either approve or modify. Granted, their arguments in it may border on frivolous (I haven't read it other than the table of contents, but it looks mostly legit from that), but their lawyers are ethically required to make the best arguments they can for their client and that's what they're doing.
What it sounds like is going on here is that the jury concluded that Novell owns the Unix copyright, so the lawyers looked for a reason why SCO should get it and came up with only one answer: That Novell had contracted to give the copyright to SCO and the Unix copyright is a unique thing that justifies specific performance (normally reserved for things like real estate sales and other unique things where just paying the value of the item won't allow you to go out and buy it for yourself, which is a more standard contract remedy). This is perfectly reasonable and a lawyer who doesn't at least try it is not a lawyer you'd want to hire.
What SCO's legal argument now is quibbling over details. SCO says the jury ruled that they did not receive the copyrights in the APA in the past. The APA in the most favorable view to SCO is that the APA was a promise to transfer the copyrights at some indeterminate future date. IANAL, but for this future transfer to occur, a contract must be signed and money must be paid. A promise to pay is contingent on the details. These are details that neither Novell nor SCO worked out in the past. This the problem for SCO since Novell can now simply say: "We'll transfer the copyrights if you pay us $300 trillion dollars."
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.