SCO Asks Judge To Give Them the Unix Copyright

Raul654 writes "In March, the jury in the Novell/SCO case found that Novell owns the copyright to Unix. Now, SCO's lawyers have asked judge Ted Stewart to order Novell to turn over the Unix copyright to them. 'SCO contends the jury did not answer the specific issue before Stewart that involves a legal principle called "specific performance," under which a party can ask a court to order another party to fulfill an aspect of an agreement.'" Over at Groklaw, PJ is deep into a community project to annotate SCO's filing. It's for the benefit of future historians, but it makes amusing reading now.

PJ, here is my annotation for the whole filing.

[Dystopian Rebel]

"Mommy! Make Timmy give me the toy!"

Wikipedia to the rescue

[dingen]

The longest running soap opera is The Guiding Light, which started in 1937 on the radio and moved to television (while keeping the same cast and storyline) in 1952. The show was cancelled in 2009 due to low ratings, which makes the total running time about 72 years.

The SCO lawsuits against Linux and other Unices started in 2002 when Darl McBride become CEO of the company. If they can keep it up for another 65 years, they can claim the title of longest running soap opera rightfully theirs.

Re:sco still alive?

[Joce640k]

Ummm ... don't forget who's funding them [wikipedia.org].

Re:sco still alive?

[gstoddart]

I think this is the second coming of SCO.

Actually, I think this is at least number 3.

Number two was the previous litigious incarnation, and number one was the original Santa Cruz Organization who actually made software.

This thing just won't die.

Cheers

Best part: Copyrights and Copywrongs citation

[ari_j]

I don't have time to read the whole thing that SCO filed at the moment, and likely won't, but a quick scan of the table of authorities shows that SCO cited an article entitled Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity, 3 J. High Tech. L. 1 (2003) to support their campaign to threaten one of the greatest creative accomplishments in computer technology (an entirely free, open-source operating system available to all and competitive with thousand-dollar alternatives). Who wants to call Alanis this time?

Re:Make. It. Stop.

[ari_j]

No sane lawyer would take the SCO case on a contingency fee (where the lawyer takes a portion of any future recovery in the case and gets paid nothing for his time if he loses it), but that doesn't rule out the possibility here. I'd say, though, that there is less than a 0.1% chance that this is being handled on a contingency.

Most of what's going on here is just part of the same lawsuit that we've heard about for years. News snippets tend to portray legal cases as if they are handled as on TV shows, where the client walks in the door with a problem on Monday and closing arguments at the trial are Thursday, with a big check to cover the verdict being spent on scotch and cigars by noon on Friday. For instance, the McDonald's coffee case was in the news just to report the jury verdict. The appeals, settlement, and years of prelude were not given nearly the same coverage.

In this case, we get snippets of things that people submit and the editors see fit to post on the Slashdot front page. But it's all part of a process. You see the same thing with space shuttle missions. They report blast-off, a major Hubble repair, and landing. But during all of that time, there are a million switches to flip and buttons to push. The astronauts don't just sit there for two weeks twiddling their thumbs. It's the same way in a lawsuit of any complexity, but especially something this big.

What this article is about is SCO's proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. This is filed late in the litigation process, generally after trial, and in the space shuttle analogy is the request for landing clearance. Novell files one, too, and then the judge decides which facts and legal conclusions are warranted on the jury verdict (which is decisive as to factual issues unless there is basically no evidence at all to support it) and the governing law (statutes, case precedents, etc.) Even if the shuttle mission were completely pointless, once you blast off you have to see it through to the end. Any argument that a lawyer makes with a straight face in this post-verdict filing is entitled to be reviewed by the judge and ruled on.

Re:Wikipedia to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

No, CBS is a broadcast network.

Re:what's worse

[srleffler]

Amendment 2 is legit. Novell did eventually find a signed copy in their own files.

Re:sco still alive?

[u38cg]

McBride was sacked in October last year.

Re:sco still alive?

[Richard_at_work]

Why is further reading needed? Nothing in your article changes the fact that it was a civil action, there was no 'conviction' as it was not a criminal suit and the 'convicted monopolist' term remains a marketing one pushed by people like yourself.

Also the fact that Microsoft had any involvement in the SCO case is completely beside the point, as my original point was that Suns payment to SCO, and thus willing involvement, has been totally swept under the carpet.

You can repeat the 'Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft' mantra all you want, you are dancing around the original point without addressing it at all, and while you do it you make my point for me - Suns history in the case has been scrubbed clean, and the truth has been hidden because people like yourself have an agenda to push.