"Does this mean that there are options that the creator of a document can use that will break this back compatability?"
Oh yes! We were developing a PowerPoint presentation, and the PPT2000 was producing things that my PPT97 couldn't read... but oddly enough I could create things they couldn't display properly. One of the sales engineers could make presentations that only work on his system... not because of links, but because of his defaults. With anyone else's defaults it would look bad.
Same thing for documents: if you have a vanilla text document, with embedded pictures and using style tags correctly... it's usually fine. But it's amazing the number of total kluges people use in document construction, that will make it "blow up" if the document is sent to any other user/computer/version because of the way MS Office handles defaults, templates and styles. Not all of the interactions between settings are documented.
I repeatedly have said that OpenOffice is as compatible with MSWord as any version of MSWord is with any other version. And there have been some absolute hair-pulling (if you are a writer) changes in MSWord that make document conversion tedious and painfu;.
I dump any emails over 100K from one account right to/dev/null, which is enough to be dumping almost all viruses. Checking the logs, I've a hundred or so already.
More annoying than the worm are all the "You are infected" warnings coming from clueless virus software. They make it through the spam filters.
Yes. It's a day-trader's delight: small amount of stock, low priced, and the subject of 2 legal actions, so it's extremely volatile and cheap to play with.
Looking at today's action so far (look at the 1-day view Cdl chart, and remember that dark blue means trading for that period closed lower than it opened), it looks like some large "Sell at market" order or orders got executed right at the opening, which can leave the short-sellers scrambling to buy shares to cover their shorts (in more ways than one) and drives the price up quickly. There was a 60,000 share flurry at a bit after 10AM... overall they closed higher, but it might be the latest bunch of fools arriving to buy form the last set.
I wasn't offended, just taking advantage of the "we made circuits from rocks and twigs" opening. I often work for chip makers and those who use the chips and they can pack a lot of goodies into an unassuming package... I look at things I used to be able to solder and can't see the pins any more without a magnifying glass.
My "radio" instructor had a standing offer that anyone who showed him a certain HAM license (one of the higher classes, not just the basic one) could walk out of the classroom on the spot and get an "A". The instant he said that, about five people grinned, fished out their wallets and walked up to the desk.
"Any original code added to SCO's Unix code becomes the property of SCO?"
No. Copyright for derivative works covers only the derived work and has no effect one way or the other on the copyright or public domain status of the preexisting material. It is possible to merge several fully copyrighted works and some public domain stuff into a single derivative work, which itself is fully copyrighted. Depending on the licensing terms of the original works, the various authors may have some rights to the derivation as a whole and what happens to it, but none of the authors of the parent material acquire any rights to the work of other authors.
In other words, it's irrelevant that IBM put NMU into AIX and Linux, because they wrote it. They have the right to put their work into anything they choose to, and regardless of any rights SCO might have over the UNIX code they acquired from Novell, they can't backtrack from a derivative work to claim rights over things they did not write.
"Such right to use includes the right to modify such SOFTWARE PRODUCT and to prepare derivative works based on such SOFTWARE PRODUCT, provided the resulting materials are treated hereunder as part of the original SOFTWARE PRODUCT." The key phrase is "derivative works"... as defined by the US copyright laws. Again they are using the terminology without bothering to look up the laws.
103 Subject matter of copyright:
Compilations and derivative works
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations
and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material
contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright
protection in the preexisting material.
The "derivative work" issue is a snarly one: If I allow Spielberg to make a movie of my blockbuster novel, with my settings and characters, it is a derivative work. The movie would be copyrighted by Spielberg, not me. I can probably be in line for some money for any video games made from the movie (depends on how the contracts are worded)... however, none of that licensing gives me ANY rights to the artwork and code for the video game or to any other movies made by Spielberg or games made by the games company. I cannot prevent them -- under
copyright law -- from asserting ownership of whatever originality exists in the derivative work. I have no rights to any extra characters written into the movie script, the costuming, special effects, software to do the SFX, and can't demand a cut of the popcorn sales.
And on the flip side, Spielberg gets absolutely no rights over my novel, nor any previous or future novels, and can't launch a sequel without my permission. He acquired the right to make ONE movie based on my novel. Period. And Spielberg probably wishes he had done what Lucas did and wrote the screenplay himself, so he would have ALL the rights.
On slide #25 they show this, from the US copyright law:
502 Remedies for infringement: Injunctions (a) Any court having jurisdiction of a civil action arising under this title may, subject to the provisions of section 1498 of title 28, grant temporary and final injunctions on such terms as it may deem reasonable to prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright.
(b) Any such injunction may be served anywhere in the United States on the
person enjoined; it shall be operative throughout the United States and shall be enforceable, by proceedings in contempt or otherwise, by any United States court having jurisdiction of that person. The clerk of the court granting the injunction shall, when requested by any other court in which enforcement of the injunction
is sought, transmit promptly to the other court a certied copy of all the papers in the case on file in such clerk's office.
So why haven't they done it? It would put IBM, HP, RedHat and a host of others out of the Linux business quickly and effectively. What is in Title 28, section 498? Just the 3-year time limit and a bunch of reasons when government employees can sue. And that you can't sue anyone for anything developed for the US Government after 1918 (there goes a lot of code developed under government contracts).
Could it be that they have to swear, under penalty of perjury, that the filing is true? Could it be that this entire slide show was just another marketing dog and pony show to prop up the stock price?
"You build a K2 *KIT* that's already designed for you, in your spare time, from the folks at http://www.elecraft.com/ and then come back and tell me ham radio's "low tech"."
Moi? Stuff boards with discrete components? Pre-etched, pre-printed, labelled boards at that? With sockets for the ICs? And resistors pre-sorted in installation order? Been there, done that, and even know how to build an audio amplifier out of transistors, resistors and capacitors if I have to. Why, sonny, back when I was building radios, we chiseled the boards out of stone and smelted copper to pour in the grooves to make the connections... well, maybe not that far back, but the one I built when I was a kid had those glass things with the pins on the bottom... oh, yeah, TUBES!
In case you missed my other posts, on the stupid idea of spewing broadband signals all over the landscape via the power lines in other threads, the "low tech" was semi-sarcastic.
It's NOT a defense case exactly... they take it based on their chances of getting a summary judgement including their fees, because of the utter stupidity of the claim.
"Are you saying that you expect only to be able to sue the person who took those photos, but cannot go and get the actual site to take down those photos?"
Photos are a bad example, because of theway the law is written. Under US copyright law, the photographer is the de facto owner of the copyright of those pictures, and you will have to do a Cameron Diaz and prove that you didn't sign a model release, and then notify the websites that the seller didn't have the rights to sell the photos. You can then offer to license the photos to them or not, but you must prove your case against the photographer first.
To put this into something where the creation of intellectual work is at stake, if I plagiarize the excellent DUMMIES for DUMMIES book, selling it as IDIOTS for IDIOTS, the copyright holder of the DUMMIES book can come after me for damages. If I have collected money for the right to resell IDIOTS for IDIOTS, those people are not liable, because they were not in a position to know where I got the text, and because my profits are going to be forfeit to the DUMMIES author. However, my resellers can probably sue me to get their money back for selling them a worthless product.
Considering this link... where Heise's firm has apparently been a member of the class of clients he was also representing... doubledipping by getting fees and settlement money, maybe it is "C".
"Homer contends that class attorney Mark Heise, a partner at Boies Schiller & Flexner, cannot serve as plaintiff counsel in the case because his law firm is a member of the class. [Heise and co-counsel] are asking the court for $3.6 million in attorney's fees. Their fees would be paid first out of the $14 million fund established under the proposed settlement."
"Under the GPL, you are FORBIDDEN to modify the code UNLESS you release your modifications to the public"
Apparently you have been smoking from the same pipe as SCO. GPL allows you to do anything you want to with the code for internal use. I have written manuals for GPL stuff that was never going to get outside the firewall after the mods were finished. The only time you have to release source code and return the mods to the community is if you redistribute the modified stuff outside the corporation.
" So, if I bought a book by Stephen Ambrose, who has been accused of plagiarism, can the 'original' author sue me? I"
No. They can sue Ambrose, and they can request that the judge impound all of the allegedly infringing material until the end of the trial (everything in the pipeline from publisher to retail gets yanked), and if they win, ask that these materials be destroyed, and get damages from Ambrose. But if that SAME author happens to see you reading a copy of that book on the subway, they can't sue you for anything. You can't collect twice for the same "injury" and they already got paid by Ambrose for their losses.
"(It is an interesting question of law whether rights to use a program, legitimately obtained, can be covered by copyright law, and to what extent. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm clueless on this one.)"
The assumption is that when you sell or give away software, that the purchaser is going to use it for it's normal purpose, not frame it or use it for a doorstop (I forget what part of common law that's in). Section 117 of the US code gives the software user the right to make a backup copy and any copies inherent to the process of installation and use, regardless of any restrictions placed on the further distribution of the software by the copyright holdre under Sec 106.
Merely filing a complaint alleging that Linux User is infringing on SCO copyrighted material and owes us thousands of dollars in damages is not enough. Part of any infringement trial is the filing of the complaint, which shows that the plaintiff has a copyright, shows the copyright material, and explains EXACTLY how the material belonging to the defendant has infringed.
In the case of books, this involves a large amount of paperwork, including a marked-up copy of your stuff and theirs (Exhibits X and Y), with the infringed/offending passages marked and numbered and referred to in the complaint.
If there is large economic harm happening or about to happen, plaintiff can ask the judge to temporarily impound the infringing material, but they have to show convincing evidence they are likely to prevail.
After you have proved infringement, the court can order removal of the offending passages, order them to pay damages, or even order destruciton of the infringing material.
"perhaps some lawyer type on here can make up a standard form letter that end users can take to their local courthouse to initiate a small claims action against SCO."
It would never make it past the clerk and you would waste your money. "Small claims" court can't issue injunctoins and will only take claims where you have "real" damages, not threats of future damage. The IP issue puts it into, at a minimum, a state "superior court" or a federal district court.
However, filing a request for a "prove it or STFU" injunction might work for the companies who have recieved those threatening letters. And anyone getting a "buy a license of we'll sue" can take it to their state AG and ask if it's extortion, given that SCO has not shown any credible proof they own anything.
"I own a small business that deploys five Red Hat AS boxes. SCO has already sent my legal department (2 lawyers) three letters (threats) regarding our "illegal use of the Linux operating system [sic]"."
Take the demands to your state attorney general and ask them if this qualifies as extortion, seeing as the "ownership" of Linux is currently being contested, SCO has shown no proof of ownership, and ask what they can do about it. AG love being seen helping out the little guy against the big bad guy. They can at least start an investigation, subpoena a bunch of stuff (including SCO code, maybe), and make things exciting in Utha.
Be prepared, with all the background material, the two suits (RF/IBM) and the legal stuff from the FSF and the logs from GROKLAW and lamlaw... they pretty well cover the issues.
Also contact RedHat and ask them for a bit of advice. You are their customer and you are being harassed by the FUD machine from SCO. They may know of others who have a solid case to ask for an injunction against this crap until SCO proves ownership.
Before I can "willfully" infringe, someone has to explain to me EXACTLY what it is that I am infringing so that I can make a free will decision to stop or continue infringing. Only then is it willful... before then it is just infringement.
If they don't do that, they can't say it's "willful" because they never gave me anything but a vague threat, three press releases, and an invoice for $6,990 dollars.
"Can someone please do something, like get an injunction against them or *something*?!"
RedHat's suit is intended to force this issue. either SCO proves their claims in court or RH get sdamages for loss of business repputaiotn and all kinds of unfamiliar butvery powerful business laws.
"If one user is forced into paying the license fee, because they are not able to fight SCO in court, does that form a precedent, which could make it easier to win any/all other lawsuits SCO currently has going on for or against them?"
NO. Caving into extortion doesn't make the extortion legal. To legally collect licensing, you first have to prove ownership of whatever it is you are licensing. IBM and RedHat are contesting SCO's claims in court... and it is reasonable to request that any attempts to collect licensing be suspended until those cases are finished. To repeat my bad analogy, if you are paying my neighbor to live an apartment, and I show up claiming that it's my property and you owe me rent... no judge will let both of us collect from you. If it turns out that I am the legal ownre, only then do you owe me rent, and I can't make you pay me all the money you paid the other guy... I have to sue them from it.
"betting the details of their first lawsuit will center more around SCO's claim to have revoked IBM's license for UNIX that lets them make and sell AIX. "
And the only reasonable response is... "Oh my. I believe IBM is currently contesting your right to revoke their right to grant me this license. Come back after it's settled."
There are ample precedents... you can't sue someone until you have a "clear title" to whatever it is you are suing them for. As a bad analogy, I can't collect rent on an apartment, if I'm suing someone else over who owns it and who is also collecting rent. The tenant can't be forced to pay to both of us. AT BEST, you get the licensing fees (rent) placed into escrow for the winner. This would not harm IBM much, but would throttle SCO's cash flow.
"Everyone knows that just going to court will cost you far more than $700 even if you win, so rather than fight the extortion, they just pay. "
HAH! There are lawyers who would take this kind of a slam-dunk case on contingency... they ask for a summary judgement, including their fees and court costs. And they proceed to go into discovery and ask for a full copy of every bit of code that SCO claims the Linux user is infringing upon.
Exactly. Anyone who is sued can ask to have the case dismissed "without predjudice", in view of the fact that SCO has no contract with them over the use of Linux, and that their rights to UNIX are currently being tested in the courts.
Or, although perhaps not legal, ask that the licensing be placed in escrow, with a matching sum from SCO, to be paid to SCO if they prevail against IBM and Redhat and establish that thye are indeed the sole owners of the universe.
"without predjudice" means if SCO wins then they can refile the case.
Getting a few marks to roll over and pay up when threatened does not constitute proof of ownership or establish the legality of anything. The first company that gets sued, as in has actual litigation filed against them, not just a bunch of threatening letters from landsharks, can get it thrown out of court... SCO has to show that they are indeed the owner of the copyrights to all that Linux stuff that says (c) IBM, Sequent, BSD, Liunus Torvalds, etc. BEFORE they can legally license its use and sue others for distrubuting it without permission.
They have to sue each individual copyright holder and establish that they infringed on something SCO has copyrighted... even then, that doesn't necessarily mean the works are SCO's to use and license, it just means that they can get the infringing bits removed. If the estate of Margeret Mitchell had prevailed in hteir suit against the author of a satire that borrowed heavily from "Gone With the Wind", they would NOT have owned that work, merely prevented its publicaiton.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes! We were developing a PowerPoint presentation, and the PPT2000 was producing things that my PPT97 couldn't read ... but oddly enough I could create things they couldn't display properly. One of the sales engineers could make presentations that only work on his system ... not because of links, but because of his defaults. With anyone else's defaults it would look bad.
Same thing for documents: if you have a vanilla text document, with embedded pictures and using style tags correctly ... it's usually fine. But it's amazing the number of total kluges people use in document construction, that will make it "blow up" if the document is sent to any other user/computer/version because of the way MS Office handles defaults, templates and styles. Not all of the interactions between settings are documented.
I repeatedly have said that OpenOffice is as compatible with MSWord as any version of MSWord is with any other version. And there have been some absolute hair-pulling (if you are a writer) changes in MSWord that make document conversion tedious and painfu;.
More annoying than the worm are all the "You are infected" warnings coming from clueless virus software. They make it through the spam filters.
Yes. It's a day-trader's delight: small amount of stock, low priced, and the subject of 2 legal actions, so it's extremely volatile and cheap to play with.
Looking at today's action so far (look at the 1-day view Cdl chart, and remember that dark blue means trading for that period closed lower than it opened), it looks like some large "Sell at market" order or orders got executed right at the opening, which can leave the short-sellers scrambling to buy shares to cover their shorts (in more ways than one) and drives the price up quickly. There was a 60,000 share flurry at a bit after 10AM ... overall they closed higher, but it might be the latest bunch of fools arriving to buy form the last set.
My "radio" instructor had a standing offer that anyone who showed him a certain HAM license (one of the higher classes, not just the basic one) could walk out of the classroom on the spot and get an "A". The instant he said that, about five people grinned, fished out their wallets and walked up to the desk.
No. Copyright for derivative works covers only the derived work and has no effect one way or the other on the copyright or public domain status of the preexisting material. It is possible to merge several fully copyrighted works and some public domain stuff into a single derivative work, which itself is fully copyrighted. Depending on the licensing terms of the original works, the various authors may have some rights to the derivation as a whole and what happens to it, but none of the authors of the parent material acquire any rights to the work of other authors.
In other words, it's irrelevant that IBM put NMU into AIX and Linux, because they wrote it. They have the right to put their work into anything they choose to, and regardless of any rights SCO might have over the UNIX code they acquired from Novell, they can't backtrack from a derivative work to claim rights over things they did not write.
103 Subject matter of copyright: Compilations and derivative works
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
The "derivative work" issue is a snarly one: If I allow Spielberg to make a movie of my blockbuster novel, with my settings and characters, it is a derivative work. The movie would be copyrighted by Spielberg, not me. I can probably be in line for some money for any video games made from the movie (depends on how the contracts are worded) ... however, none of that licensing gives me ANY rights to the artwork and code for the video game or to any other movies made by Spielberg or games made by the games company. I cannot prevent them -- under
copyright law -- from asserting ownership of whatever originality exists in the derivative work. I have no rights to any extra characters written into the movie script, the costuming, special effects, software to do the SFX, and can't demand a cut of the popcorn sales.
And on the flip side, Spielberg gets absolutely no rights over my novel, nor any previous or future novels, and can't launch a sequel without my permission. He acquired the right to make ONE movie based on my novel. Period. And Spielberg probably wishes he had done what Lucas did and wrote the screenplay himself, so he would have ALL the rights.
502 Remedies for infringement: Injunctions
(a) Any court having jurisdiction of a civil action arising under this title may, subject to the provisions of section 1498 of title 28, grant temporary and final injunctions on such terms as it may deem reasonable to prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright.
(b) Any such injunction may be served anywhere in the United States on the person enjoined; it shall be operative throughout the United States and shall be enforceable, by proceedings in contempt or otherwise, by any United States court having jurisdiction of that person. The clerk of the court granting the injunction shall, when requested by any other court in which enforcement of the injunction is sought, transmit promptly to the other court a certied copy of all the papers in the case on file in such clerk's office.
So why haven't they done it? It would put IBM, HP, RedHat and a host of others out of the Linux business quickly and effectively. What is in Title 28, section 498? Just the 3-year time limit and a bunch of reasons when government employees can sue. And that you can't sue anyone for anything developed for the US Government after 1918 (there goes a lot of code developed under government contracts).
Could it be that they have to swear, under penalty of perjury, that the filing is true? Could it be that this entire slide show was just another marketing dog and pony show to prop up the stock price?
Moi? Stuff boards with discrete components? Pre-etched, pre-printed, labelled boards at that? With sockets for the ICs? And resistors pre-sorted in installation order? Been there, done that, and even know how to build an audio amplifier out of transistors, resistors and capacitors if I have to. Why, sonny, back when I was building radios, we chiseled the boards out of stone and smelted copper to pour in the grooves to make the connections ... well, maybe not that far back, but the one I built when I was a kid had those glass things with the pins on the bottom ... oh, yeah, TUBES!
In case you missed my other posts, on the stupid idea of spewing broadband signals all over the landscape via the power lines in other threads, the "low tech" was semi-sarcastic.
Where do you live?
Photos are a bad example, because of theway the law is written. Under US copyright law, the photographer is the de facto owner of the copyright of those pictures, and you will have to do a Cameron Diaz and prove that you didn't sign a model release, and then notify the websites that the seller didn't have the rights to sell the photos. You can then offer to license the photos to them or not, but you must prove your case against the photographer first.
To put this into something where the creation of intellectual work is at stake, if I plagiarize the excellent DUMMIES for DUMMIES book, selling it as IDIOTS for IDIOTS, the copyright holder of the DUMMIES book can come after me for damages. If I have collected money for the right to resell IDIOTS for IDIOTS, those people are not liable, because they were not in a position to know where I got the text, and because my profits are going to be forfeit to the DUMMIES author. However, my resellers can probably sue me to get their money back for selling them a worthless product.
"Homer contends that class attorney Mark Heise, a partner at Boies Schiller & Flexner, cannot serve as plaintiff counsel in the case because his law firm is a member of the class. [Heise and co-counsel] are asking the court for $3.6 million in attorney's fees. Their fees would be paid first out of the $14 million fund established under the proposed settlement."
Apparently you have been smoking from the same pipe as SCO. GPL allows you to do anything you want to with the code for internal use. I have written manuals for GPL stuff that was never going to get outside the firewall after the mods were finished. The only time you have to release source code and return the mods to the community is if you redistribute the modified stuff outside the corporation.
No. They can sue Ambrose, and they can request that the judge impound all of the allegedly infringing material until the end of the trial (everything in the pipeline from publisher to retail gets yanked), and if they win, ask that these materials be destroyed, and get damages from Ambrose. But if that SAME author happens to see you reading a copy of that book on the subway, they can't sue you for anything. You can't collect twice for the same "injury" and they already got paid by Ambrose for their losses.
The assumption is that when you sell or give away software, that the purchaser is going to use it for it's normal purpose, not frame it or use it for a doorstop (I forget what part of common law that's in). Section 117 of the US code gives the software user the right to make a backup copy and any copies inherent to the process of installation and use, regardless of any restrictions placed on the further distribution of the software by the copyright holdre under Sec 106.
Not even that. Boies is working on contingency. Unless they win he gets nothing.
This is a great example of the mindset of SCO ... deride the GPL where it threatens them, but embrace it where it suits them.
In the case of books, this involves a large amount of paperwork, including a marked-up copy of your stuff and theirs (Exhibits X and Y), with the infringed/offending passages marked and numbered and referred to in the complaint.
If there is large economic harm happening or about to happen, plaintiff can ask the judge to temporarily impound the infringing material, but they have to show convincing evidence they are likely to prevail.
After you have proved infringement, the court can order removal of the offending passages, order them to pay damages, or even order destruciton of the infringing material.
It would never make it past the clerk and you would waste your money. "Small claims" court can't issue injunctoins and will only take claims where you have "real" damages, not threats of future damage. The IP issue puts it into, at a minimum, a state "superior court" or a federal district court.
However, filing a request for a "prove it or STFU" injunction might work for the companies who have recieved those threatening letters. And anyone getting a "buy a license of we'll sue" can take it to their state AG and ask if it's extortion, given that SCO has not shown any credible proof they own anything.
Take the demands to your state attorney general and ask them if this qualifies as extortion, seeing as the "ownership" of Linux is currently being contested, SCO has shown no proof of ownership, and ask what they can do about it. AG love being seen helping out the little guy against the big bad guy. They can at least start an investigation, subpoena a bunch of stuff (including SCO code, maybe), and make things exciting in Utha.
Be prepared, with all the background material, the two suits (RF/IBM) and the legal stuff from the FSF and the logs from GROKLAW and lamlaw ... they pretty well cover the issues.
Also contact RedHat and ask them for a bit of advice. You are their customer and you are being harassed by the FUD machine from SCO. They may know of others who have a solid case to ask for an injunction against this crap until SCO proves ownership.
If they don't do that, they can't say it's "willful" because they never gave me anything but a vague threat, three press releases, and an invoice for $6,990 dollars.
RedHat's suit is intended to force this issue. either SCO proves their claims in court or RH get sdamages for loss of business repputaiotn and all kinds of unfamiliar butvery powerful business laws.
"If one user is forced into paying the license fee, because they are not able to fight SCO in court, does that form a precedent, which could make it easier to win any/all other lawsuits SCO currently has going on for or against them?"
NO. Caving into extortion doesn't make the extortion legal. To legally collect licensing, you first have to prove ownership of whatever it is you are licensing. IBM and RedHat are contesting SCO's claims in court ... and it is reasonable to request that any attempts to collect licensing be suspended until those cases are finished. To repeat my bad analogy, if you are paying my neighbor to live an apartment, and I show up claiming that it's my property and you owe me rent ... no judge will let both of us collect from you. If it turns out that I am the legal ownre, only then do you owe me rent, and I can't make you pay me all the money you paid the other guy ... I have to sue them from it.
And the only reasonable response is ... "Oh my. I believe IBM is currently contesting your right to revoke their right to grant me this license. Come back after it's settled."
There are ample precedents ... you can't sue someone until you have a "clear title" to whatever it is you are suing them for. As a bad analogy, I can't collect rent on an apartment, if I'm suing someone else over who owns it and who is also collecting rent. The tenant can't be forced to pay to both of us. AT BEST, you get the licensing fees (rent) placed into escrow for the winner. This would not harm IBM much, but would throttle SCO's cash flow.
HAH! There are lawyers who would take this kind of a slam-dunk case on contingency ... they ask for a summary judgement, including their fees and court costs. And they proceed to go into discovery and ask for a full copy of every bit of code that SCO claims the Linux user is infringing upon.
Or, although perhaps not legal, ask that the licensing be placed in escrow, with a matching sum from SCO, to be paid to SCO if they prevail against IBM and Redhat and establish that thye are indeed the sole owners of the universe.
"without predjudice" means if SCO wins then they can refile the case.
Getting a few marks to roll over and pay up when threatened does not constitute proof of ownership or establish the legality of anything. The first company that gets sued, as in has actual litigation filed against them, not just a bunch of threatening letters from landsharks, can get it thrown out of court ... SCO has to show that they are indeed the owner of the copyrights to all that Linux stuff that says (c) IBM, Sequent, BSD, Liunus Torvalds, etc. BEFORE they can legally license its use and sue others for distrubuting it without permission.
They have to sue each individual copyright holder and establish that they infringed on something SCO has copyrighted ... even then, that doesn't necessarily mean the works are SCO's to use and license, it just means that they can get the infringing bits removed. If the estate of Margeret Mitchell had prevailed in hteir suit against the author of a satire that borrowed heavily from "Gone With the Wind", they would NOT have owned that work, merely prevented its publicaiton.