Judge Rejects SCO's Motion For a New Trial

An anonymous reader writes "A judge has rejected SCO's motion for a new trial in the company's dispute over UNIX intellectual property ownership. The ruling validates a verdict that was issued in April by a jury who determined that Novell, and not SCO, is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This means SCO cannot continue to pursue its litigation against IBM and other Linux users. 'There was substantial evidence that Novell made an intentional decision to retain ownership of the copyrights,' the judge wrote in his decision. 'The Court finds that the verdict is not clearly, decidedly, or overwhelmingly against the weight of the evidence. Therefore, SCO is not entitled to a new trial.'"

Comments

Groklaw link

[symbolset]

Come on guys. Groklaw has been covering this thing since the very beginning. The least you could do is link to the article there. Give a little respect to Pam Jones for following this long slog like a trouper.

Re:Groklaw link

[homey of my owney]

Don't worry. There will almost certainly be another opportunity. This thing just won't die.

Re:Groklaw link

[tomhudson]

>Fair play (sic) to Ars: they at least did some real reporting while all PJ did was post 5 sentences and copy+paste the decision. Besides, it looks like Ars report was first.

The Ars Technica article has no real reporting beyond paraphrasing the judgment. There are no "new facts" that aren't in the actual judgment. So why not instead actually go to the site that has the judgment, as well as informed commentary on the judgment (groklaw)? You know, "view the source" ...

Re:Groklaw link

[yorugua]

Or lets quote her:

Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED! Thursday, June 10 2010 @ 04:14 PM EDT

Here you go, munchkins. Judge Ted Stewart has ruled for Novell and against SCO. Novell's claim for declaratory judgment is granted; SCO's claims for specific performance and breach of the implied covenant of good fair and fair dealings are denied. Also SCO's motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial: denied. Novell is entitled to waive, at its sole discretion, claims against IBM, Sequent and other SVRX licensees.

CASE CLOSED!

Maybe I should say cases closed. The door has slammed shut on the SCO litigation machine. The judge writes in the Memorandum Decision and Order about SCOsource, "Finally, while SCO's witnesses testified that the copyrights were 'required' for SCO to run its SCOsource licensing program, this was not something that SCO ever acquired from Novell." He totally got it. He noticed Darl McBride admitted that SCO didn't need the copyrights for anything but SCOsource. It couldn't be any better if I'd written it myself.

Was the jury misled or confused? Not at all, the judge writes: "The jury could have rejected the testimony of SCO's witnesses for a number of reasons, including their lack of involvement in drafting the APA, the fact that there was little testimony on any actual discussions concerning the transfer of copyrights, or that many of the witnesses had a financial interest in the litigation."

"The Clerk of the Court is directed to close this case forthwith," Stewart writes in the final judgment. I believe that means SCO v. IBM is essentially over now, unless IBM wishes to pursue its counterclaims.

And now it is -- finally -- time, once again, for my red dress! And a huge thank you to Michael Jacobs and the team at Morrison & Foerster, who never gave up but, more importantly, showed that you can fight hard and win with ethics and dignity, and to Sterling Brennan of Workman|Nydegger, who was frankly absolutely wonderful at trial. And thank you to you, Groklaw volunteers, because we made a difference in this world.

Re:Groklaw link

[jd]

One copy of SCO UnixWare is bad enough. You want to create a fork of it as well?!?!?!?!?

Re:Groklaw link

[daniel23]

Thanks for citing her! However, the link to the red dress got lost and needs adding.

Good.

[bi$hop]

I really hope this is the last I ever have to hear about SCO.

Re:Good.

[WrongSizeGlass]

I really hope this is the last I ever have to hear about SCO.

Well, just remember that you can't spell scourge of the earth without SCO

Re:Good.

[Eudial]

I really hope this is the last I ever have to hear about SCO.

Well, just remember that you can't spell scourge of the earth without SCO

You can't spell breakfast scones either. Or scotland yard.

Re:Good.

[X0563511]

Or scrotum.

Just putting it out there. The word.

Re:Good.

[tomhudson]

In Soviet Russia, SCO helps spell MOSCOW!

In the rest of the world, SCO spells the answer to "What smells bad and spends forever circling the rim after you flush?"

SCO - the 7-Year Flush! That's a LOT of crap!

Cue Monty Python plague victim

[Frequency Domain]

"I'm not dead yet!"

Re:Cue Monty Python plague victim

[No2Gates]

It's only a flesh wound...

Re:Cue Monty Python plague victim

[Kjella]

That and the dead parrot schene combined:

Community: "It's not pinin,' it's passed on! SCO is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late company! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed him to the perch he would be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolical processes are of interest only to historians! It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an EX-COMPANY!"

SCO: "I'm not dead yet"

At least IBM, Novell etc. got the pockets to handle it. A smaller company could have been legally torpedoed by this, even if they eventually won some what, 8 years down the road now?

Disappointing news

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when my favorite show doesn't get renewed for another season.

In the year 3012....

[jkinney3]

The head of Daryl McBride is seen in court appealing the latest decision against SCO which declared Daryl McBride not eligible for compensation for inclusion into Futurama episodes on the grounds that he is "just wasting space now that other more important heads need shelf space for. Like Tiger Woods 9th wife" said Leyla. Bender, while trying to get McBride to bite his shiny metal ass, broke the head jar and dropped the head of McBride accidentally into a metal stamping machine. The head of Pam Jones laughed her jar fluid into a total froth while Fry looked on confused.

Go Courts!

[Above]

That got cleared up so quickly and easily, I'm impressed!

And in Other news TSCOG to retake the Caldera name

[RobertLTux]

THe Sco Group is now a smoking crater rundown of the different cases

NOVELL V TSCOG: Goes to Novell (this is the basis for the rest of the Litigation Lotto)
TSCOG V IBM : the case that started it all
WAIVED BY ORDER OF NOVELL (IBM does get the counter claims)
SUSE V TSCOG (arbitration): Rendered Moot (lack of grounds)
The Sco Group bankruptcy Chapter 11: to be converted to Chapter 7 (a chunk of the money is now owed to NOVELL)

(the various smaller bit cases are now also Mooted)

tips on destroying zombie companies

[dkleinsc]

1. Remember that cutting off the legal arms does no good.
2. Remember that zombie companies can continue to be threatening even if they have no leg to stand on.
3. Exposing and severing the connection between the brain and the rest of the corporate body may help, but the remaining parts can still remain dangerous, and typically twitch for some time.
4. Corporate zombies are often controlled by evil overlords. Real victory occurs only after the evil overlord is slain.
5. Remember that anything that was once good and lovable about the company that has been zombified is long gone and completely unrecoverable.
6. Zombie companies are frequently covered in parasites (lawyers).

Not over yet

[UnknowingFool]

The article seem to suggest that the SCO v IBM is over. That's not quite correct. SCO's claims against IBM most likely will be voided. IBM however has counterclaims. At this point, IBM can't get much money but knowing IBM, they want to make an example of SCO so that no other company will do this to them again.

Re:Not over yet

[Todd Knarr]

Actually IIRC IBM took code from AIX on Power and put it into Project Monterrey. SCO's claim was that IBM then took that code and contributed it to Linux, essentially claiming that they had control over anything that'd even touched Monterrey regardless of origin. The claim was even more ridiculous because the code they claimed IBM had contributed (JFS) wasn't the code contributed to Monterrey. IBM had originally written JFS for AIX on Power. Their Linux team had to create a completely new implementation of JFS from scratch, because the AIX driver couldn't be ported over to x86. And in fact the Linux team came up with such a superior implementation that IBM removed the original JFS driver (the one that got contributed to Monterrey) from AIX and ported the Linux JFS driver over to AIX on Power. So had SCO gotten past the twin hurdles of claiming control over IBM's independently-developed code just because it was contributed to Monterrey and the code they were suing over never having been contributed to Monterrey, they would've faced the hurdle of the code having come from Linux to Monterrey and not the other way around.

Of course, that's par for the course for SCO. Remember that their first allegedly infringing piece of code turned out not to even be theirs. The malloc() code they claimed was copied from SCO Unix into Linux turned out to be a piece of earlier code (released both under the BSD license multiple times and into the public domain by it's original author) that both SCO Unix and Linux had gone and used (well, SCO Unix used it, Linux had dropped it in favor of more modern code and when it was found the reaction was "What's that still doing there? Get rid of it, it's not being used and it's just cluttering things up.").

Counterclaims...

[HockeyPuck]

I can't wait for IBM to sue for all the time and money spent just to gather the source code:

Complying with the Court's Order involved more than 4,700 hours of work from more than 400 IBM employees. This does not include the time spent by IBM's counsel and consultants on this project, which was likewise considerable. IBM produced a total of more than 80 GB of source code and other electronic data to SCO, and more than 900,000 pages of paper (which were scanned and produced in electronic form on CDs).

Re:kill it

[yo_tuco]

"Will someone please squash this bug please."

Better yet, warm up your arm and be the first one to throw your best shot! Mulligans are allowed. My favorite McBride quote from a CRN Interview:

"
CRN: This lawsuit is very unpopular among many in the open-source community.

McBride: We're either right or we're not. If we're wrong, we deserve people throwing rocks at us..."

Guinnes?

[Thraxy]

Does this count as the record for "longest continuous fail"? Or was that the Bush administration?

Not how it works IMHO

[Weaselmancer]

I would think about changing my line of work if I was assigned SCO versus the World.

Nah. What you've got there are lawyers who are getting paid. Doesn't matter if what they are doing is wrong and hopeless. Look at a lawyer's paycheck. For that, Sisyphus would probably wake up cheerful and show up for a day's work with a smile.

This is just lawyers being lawyers for the most part. Sure you get some good ones every so often, like Ray Beckerman. People who actually get into the field because they wish to be superheroes. But 99.9% of the world - regardless of their job - just want to get paid.

And you and I are probably no different. I've worked on software projects that were doomed. How about you? I worked on a project once for 3 years that I knew 6 months in was going to wind up in a box on a shelf. Did I care? Hell no. I was making a paycheck during the dot bomb. Plenty of my coder friends weren't.

Once SCO finally runs out of cash these guys will move on. Some of them will wind up working for Save the Puppies, some for the RIAA. Both will sleep well that night. It's just a job.

Oh, one more thing. The SCO lawyers didn't lose. They did what Microsoft (via BayStar) paid them to do. Defame Linux. I'm sure the instructions went like this. "Make it drag out as long as you can. Sew fear and doubt. Never surrender!" Fifty million bucks buys a lot of moral flexibility. And these are lawyers, which is a profession that isn't overly burdened with saints.

And on their resume for their next job they can say that they spearheaded an impossible effort. They moved market share towards their customer and away from an open source project that has a nebulous cloud of people working on it. They attacked a ghost, did it for a decade, and did that with a tenacity that would make a pit bull proud.

There are many places where someone with that kind of determination and moral flexibility would be most welcome. I expect a lot of these resumes to wind up on the desks of BP's HR department sometime in the near future.