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Appeals Court Rules: SCO v. IBM Case Can Continue (arstechnica.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the neverending-stories dept.

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.

8 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. License Fee by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Good thing I paid my $699 License Fee to SCO. Who is laughing now???

    1. Re:License Fee by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Who is laughing now???

      Steve Ballmer is laughing now . . . he totally skanked you!

      Ok, I actually need to recuse myself here, because I was required to give a deposition for the case . . . along with a buttload of other harmless developers.

      I did development work for IBM's AIX kernel, and then worked for their Linux Technology Center. Just about everyone who was tainted with that experience got nailed.

      The deposition was ok . . . the lawyer was on Park Avenue in New York, and I live in Europe, so it was just a pleasant phone call. We tend to rant on about lawyers here in Slashdot, but I was quite positively surprised to talk to the lawyer. He wasn't an IBM employee, but worked for a law office that handled a lot of the "grunt work" for IBM. The lawyer told me ominously that the case would drag out . . . and that someone with a lot of money was sponsoring SCO . . . and that some unnamed executive from SCO got a hefty deposit in a bank account on the Cayman Islands.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  2. Groklaw by Salo2112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does this mean Groklaw is coming back to cover this mess again? :-)

  3. In Praise Of Groklaw by Freshly+Exhumed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I guess its still not time to say "Goodnight PJ, wherever you are."

    Owing for the most part to this ongoing SCO saga, the web was once gifted with the presence of Groklaw and the inimitable Pamela Jones, who brushed aside direct and very personal attacks from Darl McBride, Maureen O'Gara, and others as she provided insights and clarity for computer geeks on what tends to be a quite opaque judicial system. The comfort bar amongst FOSS supporters was raised significantly by her.

    Now please, SCO, die already. Just die.

    --
    I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
  4. Re: What The F---?? by mangastudent · · Score: 5, Informative

    SCO provided a list of source code files in the Linux kernel that infringe SCO's copyrights.

    What copyrights? As the article indicated, it was discovered at the end that SCO never owned the copyright to UNIX, they'd just bought for about 5% the value of that the right to administrate the licencing of it. And they demonstrated they knew this just before starting SCO v. The World by trying to get the rights from Novell.

  5. It isn't SCO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    > ruled against SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation)

    There was a company called "SCO (whose original name was Santa Cruz Operation)" but this isn't them, they changed their name to Tarantella when they sold the business to Caldera. Caldera changed their name to 'The SCO Group'.

    SCO did not litigate against IBM, that was TSG.

  6. Wha..? by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 5, Funny

    My first thought this was one of the randomly generated Slashdot stories from last week from, say, 2006.

  7. Re: What The F---?? by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.