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Novell Wins Against SCO Again

Posted by Unknown on from the case-finally-closed dept.

duh P3rf3ss3r writes "The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has just affirmed the District Court ruling in SCO v Novell (PDF) in its entirety. The decision is quite a good read and lays out the reasons why the court has rejected, in toto, SCO's attempt to re-argue the case before the Court of Appeals. Is this the last gasp for SCO or will they try to appeal this to the Supreme Court? The betting lines open at 11..." Realistically this is the end of the line for the case.

34 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Not Dead Yet? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriously, how does SCO _still_ have any money left to pursue legal costs??

    1. Re:Not Dead Yet? by bmo · · Score: 3, Informative

      BS&F signed a contract saying they'd help pursue the case until the heat death of the universe.

      Because Ralphie had them bamboozled at the beginning citing "Sagans" of dollars if they win.

      No scam without a greedy mark.

      --
      BMO

    2. Re:Not Dead Yet? by nyet · · Score: 5, Informative

      Answer: BS&F are still hoping for brazillions back, even though SCOG is broke.

      A better question is, where did all the money go anyway? Novell never got paid the money that SCOG owed them.

      Answer: Delaware bankruptcy court (specifically Judge Gross in this case) is utterly corrupt and broken. They siphon money away from creditors and towards lawyers, making sure that ALL creditors get stiffed, until there is no money left.

      Why do you think incorporating in Delaware is so popular?

    3. Re:Not Dead Yet? by shentino · · Score: 2

      Which also means massive clawback from breach of contract if BS&F backs out.

      They quit and they have to refund their legal fees.

    4. Re:Not Dead Yet? by shentino · · Score: 3, Informative

      Conversion is the tort of wrongfully disposing of someone else's property.

      For example. If you loan someone your car, and they sell it, they have converted your car.

      It's the civil version of embezzling.

    5. Re:Not Dead Yet? by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No matter how you look at it, SCO was basically reconfigured by McBride and Co. into a scam. At first it was simply trying to extort IBM into paying it off in a now all-too-common form of IP extortion. When it became clear that IBM had no interest in undermining its investment in Linux, it basically evolved into a pump and dump. SCO and its allies took the opportunity to use disgusting little fuckers like Daniel Lyons to give their ludicrous claims weight. Of course, greedy morons gathered from near and far to hand SCO money because it was going to be getting all these licensing fees from every copy of Linux out there. Once that plan flopped spectacularly and SCO's underlying claims finally deep-sixed completely, it then transformed into a lawyer's scam.

      The whole thing leaves me very disgusted with the civil law system. That a company who could not even produce any clear evidence of IP theft or infringement was allowed to just keep reinventing its case over and over for years, to make ever more shrill and absurd claims, is beyond me. Why the system isn't built so that if you don't have the goddamned evidence clear as a bell ready to submit when papers are field, you're not even allowed through the door, is beyond me. This is truly a system built simply to make lawyers lots of money.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    6. Re:Not Dead Yet? by sumdumass · · Score: 2

      Sort of. Conversion generally doesn't pertain to the complete loss of the item or privilege, it's more of the loss of control over it.

      A better example might be instead of someone selling the car they borrowed from the op, they rent it to someone else after the op said you could only drive it to and from the hospital to visit your sick mom.

      Embezzlement might be a better way of describing it. Suppose you owned a business and I managed it. But instead of making nightly deposits, I saved them all and made 1 weekly deposit. You decide to do a mid week inspection to find none of the money was on site and after drilling me for the whereabouts, you find that I was depositing it into my bank account in order to collect interest on it before it was deposited into your bank account. You further find that I withdrew part of the quarterly budget and invested it into a short term CD, again to collect the interest for myself.

      This is conversion, I used something of yours without your permission but you didn't lose anything you already had as the money was always deposited into the right accounts by the times it was supposed to be deposited. Another example along the same lines of embezzlement, suppose I have a company car that i am supposed to drive to and from work and use while working and when entertaining clients. But I use the car for personal things like taking the rug rats to soccer and going to my underwater basket weaving classes before hitting the clubs on the way home. That is conversion to and the company doesn't lose out on anything (other them maybe mileage on the car).

    7. Re:Not Dead Yet? by jonadab · · Score: 2

      > The whole thing leaves me very disgusted with the civil law system.

      Civil law isn't the problem. Common law is the problem. It doesn't matter what the law says. The lawyers can argue forever, dredging up and misapplying the history of every even marginally similar court case in the history of the Western world. If one judge or jury ever caves in to a sob story and steps away from what the law clearly intends, every case from then until the end of time can cite it as a legal precedent.

      The intent of a common law system is to avoid having to endlessly recursively define things that everyone bloody well understands just fine -- if the law has always been understood a certain way, as having a certain intent, then lawyers aren't supposed to be able to fiddle around with semantic games and make loopholes out of thin air. In principle, this makes sense. In practice, however, the cure is worse than the disease. Each injustice becomes a stepping stone for lawyers to stand on while building further injustice.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  2. It's me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been giving them $5 a week.

    Look, I'm sorry, but it's the best entertainment available. :(

  3. Best quote of the article by Meshach · · Score: 5, Funny

    Over SCO’s objection, the district court allowed Novell to show the jury a slide containing a quote from a BusinessWeek article referring to SCO as “The Most Hated Company in Tech.” (R. Vol. VIII at 2815; R. Vol. XIV at 5091).

    From the PDF, Page 11

    --
    "Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
    Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:Best quote of the article by gstrickler · · Score: 2

      And it was allowed only because SCO's "expert witness" included damages from after the initial ruling in Novell's favor. Had the expert properly stopped his estimate as of the date of the initial ruling, Novell would have had no grounds to introduce this quote to contradict the expert testimony. So because of SCO's own mistake, we now have evidence in the trial record that SCO is "The Most Hated Company in Tech.". Classic.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
  4. "Realistically"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    After years of this nonsense? Long after 99.99% of people could see that it was nonsense, including the courts? Since when have "realistic" evaluations of the legal case ever mattered to SCO's legal efforts? I expect it to go to the Supreme Court, and after that to various international courts. And maybe after that the interplanetary court.

    The answer to "Will they try to appeal this to the Supreme Court?" can be found in the answer to the question: "What strategy will net the SCO lawyers the most money?"

    1. Re:"Realistically"? by v1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The SCOTUS doesn't have to hear your case, they only take on cases with merit. Even if they do request this case to be heard, it has zero chance of actually happening. So they're done now. At least in the courtroom.

      If anyone has them, I'd love to see some actual statistics of how many cases are presented and how many are heard, giving a percentage. (on the average, over the last few years, or even to see how the numbers change over the years) I bet they have a fairly low percentage of cases heard. (10%?)

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    2. Re:"Realistically"? by rkfig · · Score: 4, Informative

      According to supremecourt.gov: "The Court receives approximately 10,000 petitions for a writ of certiorari each year. The Court grants and hears oral argument in about 75-80 cases." So, roughly, just shy of 1%

    3. Re:"Realistically"? by rjh · · Score: 4, Informative

      This is pretty close, but not quite accurate. SCOTUS takes cases principally according to:

      1. Issues of original jurisdiction (cases involving diplomats or ambassadors, or in which a state is a party). For these cases, SCOTUS is allowed, but not required, to be the trial court. In practice, only cases involving two states get this expedited original-jurisdiction treatment: everything else gets to go through normal federal channels.
      2. Statutes which expressly state they may be only heard by the Supreme Court (yes, there are a few)
      3. Cases in which two different appellate courts, applying the same SCOTUS precedents to similar cases, have reached different decisions

      The first category is really astonishingly rare. The second is almost as much so. The third accounts for the overwhelming majority of SCOTUS's workload.

      Note that SCOTUS really doesn't care if your case "has merit." No judge really does. A judge's job isn't to decide if your case has merit: that's the jury's job. A judge's job is to make sure the laws are applied fairly and without bias to both parties.

      At the SCOTUS level, SCOTUS cares whether their precedents are creating confusion among the appellate courts. If two appellate courts come to two different readings of SCOTUS's precedents, then SCOTUS will generally hear a case so that their opinion can help bring clarity to the courts.

      With respect to the number of cases heard per year, approximately 1 in 200 cases appealed to SCOTUS will be heard by the Court. The buck stops at the appellate level 99.5% of the time.

      (Source: David R. Hansen, former Chief Judge of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. IANAL: I'm just reporting what he's said.)

  5. Again? by MrEricSir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Realistically this is the end of the line for the case.

    How many times have we heard that?

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Again? by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Too damn many.

      I'll believe it's all over when SCO's articles of incorporation have been burnt, the ashes salted, placed in a silver box, surrounded by garlic and placed outside the courthouse of the eastern district of Texas as an example to other patent trolls. I'd also like a waiver on public indeceny laws to permit pissing on the box, but you have to draw the line somewhere...

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    2. Re:Again? by sconeu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except there are no patent claims in either Novell or IBM.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  6. Rinse.. by Dynamoo · · Score: 2

    Rinse and repeat. Until dead.

    --
    Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
  7. Realistically? by Blackeagle_Falcon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Realistically this is the end of the line for the case."

    SCO has not been realistic at any time during this case.

  8. Re:The horror... by the+linux+geek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Back in the day, they (and their predecessor companies) made good products. Caldera OpenLinux was one of the most user-friendly Linux distributions of the day, and the two flavors of SCO UNIX had a large customer base. There are still a fair number SCO UNIX customers left, but I would assume they're seriously evaluating their migration options.

    That side of the business is now owned by an entity called Unxis, and I would guess the remainder of SCO itself is mainly to continue this lawsuit.

  9. Sing along, everyone: by Hartree · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is the lawsuit that doesn't end
    Yes, it goes on and on my friend
    Some people started litigating it not knowing what it was
    And they`ll continue litigating it forever just because...

  10. It's only been eight years by walterbyrd · · Score: 2

    Considering that scox's case was obviously meritless from day one, you can't expect the courts to move too fast.

  11. Why this went on so long by clemenstimpler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The lawyers were paid upfront - so they may be forced to beat single bones of this skeleton to an en-banc-hearing or the Supreme Court. Both are dead ends.

    I guess this charade will have taught Boies Schiller & Flexner that such arrangements are a bad deal. Larry Ellison will have to cough up money for every step he wants to go in Oracle vs. Google (maybe the best coming out of this case).

    And, of course, the counterclaims of SCO vs. IBM may have to be dealt with.

  12. Just one case by Xtifr · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is just one case. There's still several other cases to be resolved: SCO v IBM, Red Hat v SCO, SCO v Autozone (or Daimler/Chrysler), and, of course, the upcoming SCO v Boies, et al, where SCO sues their own lawyers for not winning these unwinnable cases. :)

    I'm also hoping to see SCO v Microsoft, where SCO sues Microsoft for not providing sufficient funds to slow the growth of Linux as agreed, and Microsoft countersues because SCO didn't achieve the success they promised with the initial round of funding.

  13. Ha! by superdave80 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Realistically this is the end of the line for the case.

    You must be new here.

  14. Re:The horror... by RenderSeven · · Score: 2

    If you navigate to the 'press releases' section of their web site, its 404'd. That cant be a bad thing...

  15. Still claiming ownership though. by pionzypher · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Seriously.... at what point do they have to remove this shit from their site?

    SCO is the owner of the UNIX Operating System Intellectual Property that dates back to 1969, when the UNIX System was created at AT&T's Bell Laboratories. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, SCO has acquired ownership of the copyrights and core technology associated with the UNIX System.

    --
    I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
    1. Re:Still claiming ownership though. by julesh · · Score: 2

      That's an interesting question. There's a possibility Novell could sue them for slander of title. Ironically, this is one of the things SCO sued Novell over. See groklaw here.

  16. Re:The horror... by salesgeek · · Score: 2

    Facts: Caldera purchased SCO, Inc. Life was good. Then investor Ralph Yarro pushed Caldera into a radical direction in 2002. First, most of SCO was spun off as Tarantella. Second, SCO was renamed the SCO Group and began trying to extort license revenue out of companies that used Linux.

    It was bizarre. A near 100% reversal of direction. To date, no one, and I mean no one, from Ransom Love (former Caldera CEO) to Darl McBride (CEO pushed in by Yarro who displaced Love) can explain what happened. Up unitl 2002, Caldera had fought tooth and nail to get Linux into the enterprise (that is what their distribution was) and suddenly did an about face and started attacking Linux.

    At this point, I'd love to hear the story of what cause the change in 2002.

    --
    -- $G
  17. Just in case... by symbolset · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just in case somebody thinks this anonymous coward is a member of the slashdot tinfoil hat brigade, blaming Microsoft for everything...

    Halloween Document 10 lays out in intimate detail how Michael Anderer, a consultant to SCO, used Microsoft to gain up to in his on words "$82-86 million." Baystar's manager of their $50 million SCO investment complained: "Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would backstop, or guarantee in some way, Baystar's investment ... Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO."

    The documents are in the public record, confirmed by all parties and well reported in the press. This is almost all of the money SCO used to fund their meritless 8-year legal campaign against Linux.

    /And I'm not that AC either.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  18. bankruptcy trustee's role in theft! by anwyn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The most outrageous thing about this whole fiassco is the bankruptcy's trustee's complicity in SCO's theft. This is not money that SCO owes Novell. This is money that never was SCO's in the first place. Courts have ruled it was "converted" which means stolen. Yet the backruptcy trustee corruptly continues to hold and spend Novell's money. This makes him complicit in that theft.

  19. Re:The horror... by EdIII · · Score: 2

    Even evil can be exquisite.

    Somehow that reminds me of......

    Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.

    I guess it is just your wording.

  20. Re:The horror... by mu51c10rd · · Score: 2

    I worked at Caldera when the buyout occured. There was a complete shift of focus away from the OpenLinux line. I gladly left a few months after the purchase, but I do recall in the immediate aftermath, many of the SCO eployees came in and many of the developers/staff from Caldera leaving. Ransom Love was respected and created a great company (OpenLinux bunlded in Grub, Webmin, and a graphical installer before the other major distros at the time), but that buyout of SCO was a fiasco.