SCO Adds Copyright Claim to IBM Suit 444
An anonymous reader writes "News.com.com reports that the SCO Group has significantly widened its Unix and Linux lawsuit against IBM,
adding a copyright infringement claim to the already complicated case." There's also another story discussing the copyright claims.
[OT] The court hearing today (Score:5, Informative)
IBM has an INCREDIBLE reply (Score:5, Informative)
Now the bad news: Posting it on Groklaw seems to have been enough to /. the court's server, so you're going to have to wait a while to read it (and no, I didn't grab a mirror while I had it - my bad).
Of course, posting the link here is far worse than posting it on Groklaw, so maybe you should try to read it tomorrow...
Late update: I re-tried the link when I did the preview, and got it - so it's back, or perhaps intermittent. I'm going to try to grab it right after I post...
In related news.com (Score:5, Informative)
This will surely give them enough funding from high-risk investors that don't mind losing a few hundred k's for a chance of a big payout.
Actaully they narrowed not widen! (Score:5, Informative)
SCO dropped the trade secrets claims.. and only is going to turn over code in 17 files that they claim is infringing 30 days from now after numerous delays..
see groklaw.com for details..
Re:Bluff bluff bluff (Score:5, Informative)
SCO HAS DROPPED THEIR TRADE SECRET CLAIM
Remember when this crap all began Darl's mantra was "It isn't about copyright, its about trade secrets." Well, apparently not any more. Highly suggest parusing Groklaw for some great coverage. IBM's court filings from yesterday are brilliant.
In other news... (Score:2, Informative)
All 12 Infringing files have been identified:
$ grep -ilR Regents
Slashdot now Linux FUD source? (Score:5, Informative)
So saying the case has been "widened" is wrong.
Also, they didn't add the claims yet. The asked the judge to allow them to add the claims. This is because they missed the deadline to add claims to the lawsuit.
You'd think there would be more reliable information from a place where Linux people supposedly hang out.
Re:IBM has an INCREDIBLE reply (Score:3, Informative)
It's both... and Terrorism too! (Score:4, Informative)
IBM's Report on SCO's Compliance (Score:5, Informative)
Re:$1.6B and dropping fast... (Score:5, Informative)
The SCO Groups' market cap is $190M and falling
Re:IBM has an INCREDIBLE reply (Score:4, Informative)
Easy to see how SCO could believe they own (c)s (Score:5, Informative)
Much as I hate the idea, I can see how the SCO execs could read the Asset Purchase Agreement [groklaw.net] to mean that they DID buy the copyrights:
SCO could easily read this as "You now own the source code. That includes (as an explicit exception to the copyright exclusion) all of Novell's copyrights on the source code that you need to enforce your ownership of the source code."
Another poster (in a previous article) wrote:
Novell has claimed in the past that SCO has asked them to transfer the copyrights, but they (Novell) refused. If they can bring hard evidence of this out (and I would bet they can) then that proves SCO knew Novell retained the copyrights.
But SCO can argue that this was just a request for confirmation of what they believed the contract meant, in preparation for their suit to enforce their copyrights. Then they could argue that Novell's refusal to give that "confirmation" was just Novell trying to back out the deal once they discovered they'd given away the store to someone who was actually going to KEEP it.
(None of which, even if the court upholds SCO's interpretation, in any way releases them from promptly identifying the alleged infringing code in Linux, so the open source community can expunge it, end the alleged infringement, and minimize the alleged damages.)
Re:Bluff bluff bluff (Score:5, Informative)
And, of course, Groklaw has a summary of today's court action [groklaw.net]. Basically SCO ends up looking stupid again.
Also claims are against AIX, not Linux (Score:1, Informative)
Re:[OT] The court hearing today (Score:5, Informative)
perl -e 'foreach (`find kernel-source-2.4.24 -type f -exec wc -l {} \\\;`) {/^(\d+)
5308651
(damn that's hackish). That's about 5 million lines of everything and anything in the kernel source, including documentation and
Re:The SCO Group Exchanges Series A Convertible Pr (Score:3, Informative)
Preferred stock is kinda special and comes with a lot of extras. Common stock doesn't, but common stock gets it's dividends first (as a trade off).
A common thing with preferred stock is to be able to convert it to common stock through some financial transaction with the company. I'm not sure exactly how, but it's possible for the company to make or lose money through this transaction.
You can't just change the rules related to a share be it common or preferred, but you can take away a share and replace it with a new one (if the stock holders agree).
This looks like they yanked all of the preferred stock, and replaced it with a new flavor of preferred stock that doesn't have a conversion feature.
Somehow or other, the potential losses SCO would have if the preferred stock was converted to common stock were showing up on their balance sheet.
By yanking the conversion features from the preferred stock, that potential loss goes away and the books look better without having really done much of anything.
How's that for a vague explanation?
Re:[OT] The court hearing today (Score:2, Informative)
Honestley I think that sco started this whole thing in an attempt to get ibm to buy them out. They got a shit deal with novel and wanted to get out.
As for the whole claim that sco own's unix sys V, why would they give all the money they collect from lisenses to Novel. They bought the buisness of lisenseing unix not the actual code.
Re:The SCO Group Exchanges Series A Convertible Pr (Score:1, Informative)
SCO traded some prefered stock shares for $50 million last October. Because of the rules for how the stock was valued, SCO needed to account for the shares as a liability on their balance sheet.
By exchanging those share with the new and improved shares, that have different rules, there is no need to keep listing a liability on the balance sheet. Thus SCO's bottom line appears better, at least in the future.
It is interesting to note that the new and improved prefered shares can be exchanged for common stock shares (the ones you and I could buy) with a guaranteed price floor of $13.50. If SCO's stock price were to fall precipitously, the holders of these prefered shares could exchange them, and sell them to SCO for $13.50! So I think SCO gets two things: One is the accounting change, and the other is to help convince the holders of these prefered shares that their investment is less risky.
Re:You're all missing SCO's trick (Score:3, Informative)
Except that SCO doesn't know exactly what they are doing themselves. Of a high importance, as other posters and groklaw pointed out, is that SCO has dropped the trade secret allegation from their lawsuit. This is, or rather was, one of the biggest parts of their lawsuit. Besides, the copyright claims they added are in regards to AIX, not Linux.
Remember, SCO has also argued they may have a problem disclosing what source code has been copied because their trade secrets were going to be violated. Now, they have switched their tune to - we need IBM to give us the source code of everything they have ever written so we can find out if and what they copied.
IANAL, but what I gather from groklaw summary is that judge ordered SCO to produce evidence, so IBM could reply to their claims. If SCO cannot provide any evidence, then judge cannot order IBM to give SCO source code to all their software.
Besides, IBM pointed out that its contributions to Linux kernel are a matter of looking up publicly available records, and it cannot be unnecessarily burdened to produce the same evidence that is already available in public. However, I cannot discern what SCO's logical response to that was. They had none in the groklaw summary.
Anyway, it seems like the judge will issue a strict order to SCO to comply, giving them 2-4 additional weeks. I somehow don't understand - was the previous court order not a strict one?
Re:Copyright claim is not against Linux! (Score:3, Informative)
At least, it's been pared back down to what it was originally -- a weak contract case. SCO owns AT&T's contract with IBM that says that IBM can't reveal the methods used in their enhancements to SysV UNIX (AIX) without permission. IBM says
To some degree, the original SCO legal theory made a bit of sense. And SCO had a point in saying that without access to IBM's internal development history, they couldn't prove/disprove their claims: JFS is in AIX, and JFS was contributed to Linux, and SCO didn't give permission, so there's at least the possibility that the methods used in "derivative works" were inappropriately revealed. People apparently in the know claim the development history shows JFS originally developed for OS/2, and ported from there to both AIX and Linux independently.
SCO and their attorneys appear to me to have committed two colossal blunders over the course of all this. They filed all kinds of other insane claims, which they have now had to drop, making them look kind of stupid. And they let Darl out without a keeper, running his mouth, making his own set of nutty claims in public ("millions of infringing lines").
I suspect that IBM is in no hurry to have the case dropped because they would prefer an outright win on the first or third grounds mentioned above. That would get them out from under any future threats from this contract.
Re:Supreme Irony in the Making (Score:3, Informative)
SCO's new claims (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Just a thought. (Score:3, Informative)
If we all paypal a couple of dollars into the pot, we can use it in order to help buy out SCO so that we can go on as usual without all this SCO gibberish.
This has been discussed. Less than half their stock is publicly traded, so buying them isn't an option.
Hilarious (Score:3, Informative)
With the amendment, the suit also includes new allegations that IBM violated its SCO contract by improperly exporting Unix software to India
And this from SCO's site:
http://www.thescogroup.com/company/success/story.
The real news is that the judge will rule shortly (Score:5, Informative)
If you read through the notes from the hearing, it's clear that SCO continues to refuse to, or is unable to, identify specific infringing code, and the judge doesn't like it. The judge said "The problem is, unless you identify those codes, then IBM is not in a position to have a response. We're at an impasse, and the case cannot continue with an impasse, that's why there was a court order". That's a clear indication from the judge. The judge isn't buying SCO's nebulous theory of general infringement.
Cravath is slowly boxing in SCO. Notice that the trade secret claim has been dropped. The copyright claim isn't in the case yet, and IBM can probably insist that it doesn't go in without SCO showing the original and the purported copy side by side.
Look for some rulings unfavorable to SCO shortly.