Posted on 10/07/2005 7:00:07 PM PDT by Khym Chanur
Several pieces of SCO v. IBM news. First, IBM has dropped it's patent counterclaims. According to IBM:
While IBM continues to believe that SCO infringed IBM's valid patents, IBM agreed to withdraw its patent counterclaims to simplify and focus the issues in this case and to expedite their resolution. The little discovery that SCO has produced regarding IBM's patent claims makes clear that there is insufficient economic reason to pursue these claims. Since SCO's sales have been, and are, limited, a finding of infringement would yield only the most modest royalty or award of damages and would not justify the expense of continuing prosecution of these claims.
Next, SCO was requesting 25 additional depositions. At a hearing before Judge Wells, SCO's lawyer Singer claimed that, even with IBM dropping the patent counterclaims, SCO still needs 20 to 25 additional depositions due to the complexity of the case, and the fact that every part of the case is contested by IBM. Wells ruled that each side gets 10 more depositions, but that these additional depositions must fit inside the current schedule.
Finally, SCO accused IBM of withholding evidence the court ordered IBM to produce . The court ordered IBM to produce "ALL non-public Linux contribution information. ... IBM, however, is hereby ordered to provide to SCO any and all non-public contributions it has made to Linux." SCO interpreted that to include programmer notes and such, while IBM interpreted to mean only the contributions themselves; when IBM refused to hand over anything more than the contributions, SCO accused them of withholding. At the hearing mentioned above, Jude Wells agreed with IBM's interpretation, and held that IBM didn't need to hand over anything more.
Re SCO asking for 25 more depositions: Fishing Expedition!
Classic legal tactics...
If you get into a legal battle w/ a smaller foe, just keep running up the legal bills and bleed 'em dry.
While SCO might want all those depositions, the truth is that they are bleeding cash at a rapid rate as their try to sue IBM, Novell, and AutoZone all at the same time.
SCO thought they could get into this and hit a jackpot in a legal settlement, or get bought out, or get offered a settlement. Unfortutately, none of that will happen.
You'll notice that I haven't made any mention of the merits of the case... that's because the merits don't matter.
Because they are on their last legs, and everybody, including SCO, knows it.
Even Bush2000 and GE?
Looks like SCOX wins again against the Commie/Pinko IBM. IBM has to drop patent claims and SCO gets both more dispositions and files without having to show exactly what this case is about. FUD and delay continue. US legal system continues to be shown as a joke.
Let's see, David Boise vs. Microsoft, David Boise/Al Gore vs Bush, David Boise vs IBM, David Boise lawyer for Napster. So much for the great laywer.......
The delay-filled justice system does NOT benefit the smaller company. SCO will go broke before they get anywhere near a judgement. Add to that the fact that their products have ALWAYS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, sucked.
> their products have ALWAYS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, sucked
Oh yeah, man. Linux was WAY better than Xenix 386 even back in 1987. Yeah man. Still wondering how much UNIX code got pasted in ...
??? I'm assuming a SARCASM tag is implied?
Boise's law firm agreed to a fee cap on the IBM case, so that case will keep going (even if the case goes into appeals) until either it's over or SCO files for liquidation type bankruptcy. The fee cap also means that they're hemorrageing less money, so they can last a while longer before bankruptcy (assuming that Novell doesn't get all of SCO's funds locked away).
Stolen? Perhaps. One of SCO's employee's admitted that the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) module, which lets Linux libraries run on SCO's OS, used the Linux kernel in some manner. We're not exactly sure how it was used, so we can't say with certainty that it was a GPL violation, but I can't really think of how the kernel could be used in something like the LKP without violating the GPL, so a violation seems likely.
Oops. Actually, that's not quite right. If SCO only used the header files from the Linux kernel for their LKP, it probably wouldn't get a GPL violation.
> I'm assuming a SARCASM tag is implied?
Tagging it is so 2000s. The best sarcasm is subtle.
lol
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