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.

Comments

sco still alive?

[nonewmsgs]

isn't sco dead yet?

Re:sco still alive?

[zero.kalvin]

I think this is the second coming of SCO.

Re:sco still alive?

[Joce640k]

Ummm ... don't forget who's funding them.

Re:sco still alive?

[Mindcontrolled]

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Just more evidence that SCO is an unholy abomination, an eldritch spawn from the depths, dreaming yet always on the verge of descending upon the Earth in a storm of chaos, madness and despair. Note the double meaning of "lie" in above excerpt from the necronomicon. Note also, that they used to be called Caldera - making their connection to sinister chthonic powers a wee bit too obvious for my taste...

IA! IA! SCO FHTAGN! CALDERA FHTAGN!

Re:sco still alive?

[gstoddart]

I think this is the second coming of SCO.

Actually, I think this is at least number 3.

Number two was the previous litigious incarnation, and number one was the original Santa Cruz Organization who actually made software.

This thing just won't die.

Cheers

Re:sco still alive?

[pushf popf]

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.

Re:sco still alive?

[StuartHankins]

I suggest further reading, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft . Sun's payments are irrelevant.

If you truly don't understand the issues with a convicted monopolist (such as Microsoft) paying a 3rd party to attack their competition, then no amount of rational discourse will help you understand why that's wrong.

Re:sco still alive?

[u38cg]

McBride was sacked in October last year.

Re:sco still alive?

[CarpetShark]

McBride was sacked in October last year.

Besides the kick in the nuts, he was also fired.

PJ, here is my annotation for the whole filing.

[Dystopian Rebel]

"Mommy! Make Timmy give me the toy!"

nah, SCO is dead..

[miataninja]

but the lawyers are still alive (and feeding on the corpse)

CLANG!

[zepo1a]

[clang]
CORPSE COLLECTOR: Bring out your dead!
NOVELL: Here's one.
CORPSE COLLECTOR: Nine pence.
SCO: I'm not dead!
CORPSE COLLECTOR: What?
NOVELL: Nothing. Here's your nine pence.
SCO: I'm not dead!

Wikipedia to the rescue

[dingen]

The longest running soap opera is The Guiding Light, which started in 1937 on the radio and moved to television (while keeping the same cast and storyline) in 1952. The show was cancelled in 2009 due to low ratings, which makes the total running time about 72 years.

The SCO lawsuits against Linux and other Unices started in 2002 when Darl McBride become CEO of the company. If they can keep it up for another 65 years, they can claim the title of longest running soap opera rightfully theirs.

Re:Wikipedia to the rescue

[inamorty]

Does that mean that 2075 will be the year of the Linux Desktop?

Hey Judge, while you're listening

[Hognoxious]

Hey your Judgeousness, while you're listening, I'd like a pony.

Make. It. Stop.

[whisper_jeff]

Seriously, at what point does the legal system decide it's fed up with their bullshit and put a stop to it. Everyone deserves their day in court but I think SCO has gotten more than their due...

Re:Make. It. Stop.

[RichMan]

When SCO decides to stop spending money on lawyers. The problem is SCO managed to sucker the lawyers in at the beginning into an up front fee and the lawyers are committed to see it through "all appeals". So while SCO is now bankrupt and running on a loan in bankruptcy over its non-existant IP the lawyers are still "happily paid" and running this thing.

So the lawyers are committed. I sort of hope this is the lawyers doing an exit strategy of over committing on a stupid claim that will get denied so they can then make a short appeal which will also get denied then exit. Then they can point at this filing and say "see we did our best".

Re:Make. It. Stop.

[ari_j]

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.

Re:Make. It. Stop.

[ari_j]

No sane lawyer would take the SCO case on a contingency fee (where the lawyer takes a portion of any future recovery in the case and gets paid nothing for his time if he loses it), but that doesn't rule out the possibility here. I'd say, though, that there is less than a 0.1% chance that this is being handled on a contingency.

Most of what's going on here is just part of the same lawsuit that we've heard about for years. News snippets tend to portray legal cases as if they are handled as on TV shows, where the client walks in the door with a problem on Monday and closing arguments at the trial are Thursday, with a big check to cover the verdict being spent on scotch and cigars by noon on Friday. For instance, the McDonald's coffee case was in the news just to report the jury verdict. The appeals, settlement, and years of prelude were not given nearly the same coverage.

In this case, we get snippets of things that people submit and the editors see fit to post on the Slashdot front page. But it's all part of a process. You see the same thing with space shuttle missions. They report blast-off, a major Hubble repair, and landing. But during all of that time, there are a million switches to flip and buttons to push. The astronauts don't just sit there for two weeks twiddling their thumbs. It's the same way in a lawsuit of any complexity, but especially something this big.

What this article is about is SCO's proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. This is filed late in the litigation process, generally after trial, and in the space shuttle analogy is the request for landing clearance. Novell files one, too, and then the judge decides which facts and legal conclusions are warranted on the jury verdict (which is decisive as to factual issues unless there is basically no evidence at all to support it) and the governing law (statutes, case precedents, etc.) Even if the shuttle mission were completely pointless, once you blast off you have to see it through to the end. Any argument that a lawyer makes with a straight face in this post-verdict filing is entitled to be reviewed by the judge and ruled on.

Re:And if SCO _did_ get it... what?

[JiffyPop]

There has been no examples exposed by SCO or anyone else that would indicated that Linux has anything to fear from the holder of UNIX copyrights, whoever that may be. If there were any code that infringes on a copyright then that functionality can be re-coded from the specifications, eliminating any infringement.

They're the Black Knight of the Holy Grail

[sizzzzlerz]

All their legs and arms have been chopped off and they're still taunting the legal system.

Running away, eh? Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!

Define "No"

[PineHall]

From the Article:

The jury was asked, "Did the amended Asset Purchase Agreement transfer the Unix and UnixWare copyrights from Novell to SCO?" It answered, "No," ... SCO contends the jury could have meant various things by its verdict that do not preclude Stewart from ordering the transfer.

What part of "No" do you not understand?

Re:Define "No"

[UnknowingFool]

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."

Re:And if SCO _did_ get it... what?

[Xtifr]

it'd mean that SCO's case against IBM would have _some_ (and i say _some_) merit.

Getting the copyrights now shouldn't help them. All the code in Linux has been already distributed by the current Unix copyright holders under the terms of the GPL. Even if SCO gets the copyrights, they can't revoke the perfectly valid license that has already been granted to any Unix code that might happen to be in Linux.

Oh, and it was SCO (Caldera) that put Ancient Unix in the public domain. Ironically, they probably did so illegally, since Novell owned the copyrights, not that Novell is likely to complain at this late date.

Best part: Copyrights and Copywrongs citation

[ari_j]

I don't have time to read the whole thing that SCO filed at the moment, and likely won't, but a quick scan of the table of authorities shows that SCO cited an article entitled Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity, 3 J. High Tech. L. 1 (2003) to support their campaign to threaten one of the greatest creative accomplishments in computer technology (an entirely free, open-source operating system available to all and competitive with thousand-dollar alternatives). Who wants to call Alanis this time?

Re:And if SCO _did_ get it... what?

[SharpFang]

SCO: Linux violates our copyrights on UNIX!
IBM: No, it does not. Not a single line infringes on UNIX
Novell: Wait, what? We own copyright on UNIX.
SCO: Your honor, we are unable to pursue the lawsuit against Linux infringing upon our rights to UNIX because we don't have them, Novell does. Could you force them to hand these rights over to us so that we could continue suing Linux?