Posted on 04/26/2005 8:28:12 AM PDT by N3WBI3
Here's IBM's Objections to SCO's Privilege Log[PDF] as text, thanks to Feldegast, who certainly earned a gold star with this thankless task. The detail is a bit overwhelming as it is, so he left the footnotes on the page where they appear, rather than clustering them at the end, as we normally do. I hope it helps.
Footnote 1 is interesting, because SCO's privilege logs from November and December of 2004 had 19,207 entries. This one, filed in March, has only 2,998 entries, and IBM has no clue why. So IBM reserves the right to object and to compel production of the missing documents. That indicates a woops. But until it plays out, we won't know what happened, but it is definitely something to keep our eyes on.
Just because a suit doesn't have merit doesn't mean you can't file one.
if only they made SCO foot the bill for the court costs OF BOTH SIDES when they lose. That'd help eliminate a lot of merit-less suits, in any field.
Wow you agree with Linus on something, who would have thought. Its pretty easy for you to say that but if it were your company on the line you might feel differently..
I hope you weren't one of those open source software haters slamming Linus Torvalds for suggesting that no one doing OSS should research patents.
I could be wrong, though.
Me? Nah. ;-p
I have a legitimate complaint with Linus Torvalds, as he has refused to investigate likely patent infringement by his product even when warned about specific implementations. Once in his e-mail, after being advised by another developer about likely infringement, he said he wasn't worried about it, and would "hire a hit man and whack the git" before investigate the possibility. If you don't have a problem with that, you should.
http://zgp.org/linux-elitists/6u3ctl0yr5.fsf@zork.zork.net.html">http://zgp.org/linux-elitists/6u3ctl0yr5.fsf@zork.zork.net.html
You've mentioned in the past that you are a manager of a moderately large Windows shop. I am hereby advising you of possible infringement of many different patents being perpetrated by your developers. You'd better put aside everything you're doing and investigate every line of code your shop is developing against the PTO's files.
Since you have "a problem with" people who don't take this kind of accusation seriously, when can I expect your report?
LOL. Okay, I'll bite. Identify the patents that have been infringed and then we'll talk.
Yeah--that's the problem, isn't it? That's basically what Linus was saying to those people who advised him to do a patent search on all of his code (or all of the code that goes into the kernel).
Have a problem with humor? Why?
Yep. That's precisely why I'm not in favor of doing patent searches when you're developing a product or service. Granted, you could have tremendous liability if you're eventually found to have infringed; however, I'd argue that a patent search wouldn't be comprehensive enough to eliminate the possibility of somebody making a claim against you. I've seen some incredibly wacky patent infringement claims -- some of which were originally based on physical mechanical processes and the patent owner attempted to apply them to software. Odds are, a software patent owner wouldn't have thought of the threat of such a claim -- but it still happens. Likewise, it's also possible that a developer could become tained by the knowledge obtained while doing patent searches -- which introduces the possibility of a willful infringement claim. So the moral of the story remains ... don't do patent searches without very, very good reasons.
IIRC, a few years back some people google bombed SCO to show up as the #1 search result for "litigating bastards".
I thought it was funny. But then I subscribe to the South Park philosophy of nothing is off-limits. If people can't take a joke, then screw'em. Linux doesn't have a responsibility to the shareholders of a specific company he runs, so he doesn't have to worry.
That's "litigious bastards," and SCO is still at the top.
Nevermind, "litigious bastards" still returns mostly hits about SCO, but Google apparently removed the actual #1 link to SCO. Bummer.
actually one potential sanction for discovery violation is to have ALL your pleadings striken (as if you never filed any papers) and then a DEFAULT entered against you.
THEN the issue becomes to the lowest standard to sustain over an appeal. Abuse of Discretion by the judge. They will have to show they somehow were not really ingnoring discovery but were never given the chance to comply.
I think all these intimidation by litigation suits must be terminated as part of tort reform.
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