SCO v. Novell Goes To the Jury 67
Excelcia writes "Closing arguments in the six and a bit year old slander of title case between SCO and Novell occurred today and the case is finally in the hands of the jury. It's been an interesting case, with SCO alternately claiming that the copyrights to UNIX did get transferred to them, and that the copyrights should have been transferred to them. 'Judge Ted Stewart said, after the jury left to begin to deliberate, that in all his years on the bench, he's never seen such fine lawyering as in this case.' We're not going to find out the results until at least Tuesday, however, as one juror is taking a long weekend. Great lawyering notwithstanding, we can all hope next week that the Energizer bunny of all spurious lawsuits will finally go away."
Re:I'd hate to be on that jury... (Score:5, Informative)
The jury portion of the trial started on March 8 (link is to a PDF) [groklaw.net].
Re:Is UNIX even worth suing over these days? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about Linux, but BSD definitely contained Unix code from USL, and vice-versa. They settled out of court [wikipedia.org]. Should ever SCO decided to go after BSD, it would open a big can of worms [freebsd.org]. More details can be found in The Unix Heritage Society [tuhs.org] and Bitsavers [bitsavers.org] Archives.
Re:A six year case (Score:2, Informative)
and the jury will return a verdict by Tuesday?
No. One of the jurors had a vacation or something planned for this weekend and won't be back until Monday.
Because of that, the judge agreed that the jury didn't have to reconvene until Tuesday.
So there will be no verdict until Tuesday at the earliest.
Re:I'd hate to be on that jury... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it is the original Novell case.
The March 8th date was just the date the appeals system remand-booted it back down to the trial court level.
The jury was there for three weeks (Score:4, Informative)
Basically the way this case went was:
1) Both sides file a bunch of pre-trial motions....
2) SCO loses. Case gets thrown out without prejudice
3) SCO refiles.
4) Wash, rinse, repeat
5) SCO loses key pre-trial motions, files for bankrupcy.
6) SCO puts this case on hold via bankrupcy court.
7) Eventually, six years later, it actually gets before a jury.
Six years was the period of legal struggle. Depending on how you count this case (whether re-filing counts as a new case, for example), this case is not even six years old.... However the whole struggle.....
Re:Is UNIX even worth suing over these days? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Since settlement was not disclosed at the time, BSD development continued with 4.4-Lite, that was specifically created to exclude everything that was disputed with USL.
2. This can of worms WAS opened during SCO saga, and resulted in the whole thing being disclosed to the publuc [groklaw.net]. Basically, USL secretly agreed to stop being a bunch of assholes.
Re:SCO is likely to win :-( (Score:3, Informative)
You missed out an important step.
SCO isn't SCO. Santa Cruz did the deal with Novell. Santa Cruz sold the Unix "business" to Caldera. When Santa Cruz changed their name to Tarantella, Caldera jumped in and changed its name to SCO (not Santa Cruz Operation, just SCO). Novell never signed anything over to SCO. SCO just pretends to be Santa Cruz when it benefits them.