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Appeals Court Rules: SCO v. IBM Case Can Continue (arstechnica.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed quotes Ars Technica:
A federal appeals court has now partially ruled in favor of the SCO Group, breathing new life into a lawsuit and a company (now bankrupt and nearly dead) that has been suing IBM for nearly 15 years.
Last year, U.S. District Judge David Nuffer had ruled against SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation) in two summary judgment orders, and the court refused to allow SCO to amend its initial complaint against IBM. SCO soon appealed. On Monday, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that SCO's claims of misappropriation could go forward while also upholding Judge Nuffer's other two orders.
Here's Slashdot's first story about the trial more than 14 years ago, and a nice timeline from 2012 of the next nine years of legal drama.
Last year, U.S. District Judge David Nuffer had ruled against SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation) in two summary judgment orders, and the court refused to allow SCO to amend its initial complaint against IBM. SCO soon appealed. On Monday, the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that SCO's claims of misappropriation could go forward while also upholding Judge Nuffer's other two orders.
Here's Slashdot's first story about the trial more than 14 years ago, and a nice timeline from 2012 of the next nine years of legal drama.
This is just the legal system grinding out the last little bits of this farce. The courts really don't care how stupid the case is, all the little technical bits still have to get handled the same.
The reason it is still around is that IBM isn't willing to just walk away and let it go, they want to burn the case completely to the ground as a warning to others who would sue them. So as long as SCO isn't willing to walk away the clear loser, they can drag it out like this. Both sides have lots of money, so the Court doesn't really care if they want to hash out the correct answer to each legal argument that was made in the case. Neither side is crying about the process.
> Both sides have lots of money
No. IBM has money. TSG (or who they sold the litigation rights to) has none*. BSF has an obligation, they have a contract with TSG and its successors to continue the case to the bitter end in the hope of getting a percentage of the win.
* TSG gave BSF 30million to continue the case indefinitely. They did this to stop Novell collecting anything from their win in court. TSG's business that they bought from SCO was to collect licence fees and pass them to Novell who would pay back 5%. TSG kept the lot. Novell sued and won. TSG had no money left after giving it all to BSF.
You missed the part where it turned out that SCO didn't actually own any of the source that went into the Linux kernel. Also the part where evidence suggests they knew that but figured they could grab a few million off of IBM.
Now, they're claiming IBM distributed code as part of AIX that they were only permitted under a technicality. They wish for the court to find that the technicality was too thin.
The lawyer told me ominously ... that someone with a lot of money was sponsoring SCO . .
I wonder who that could be.
M$