Judge rejects SCO motions in its lawsuit against IBM

Deseret Morning News ^ | Saturday, February 25, 2006 | Brice Wallace

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The SCO Group Inc. had a couple motions denied Friday in its ongoing case against International Business Machines Corp.
      U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells ruled that Lindon-based SCO should not get more time for depositions of people at Intel, Oracle and The Open Group and denied a different motion to force IBM to provide more documentation in the case. She did give SCO 30 days to file a renewed motion but said it must "narrowly" define areas that have not been covered in documents IBM already has provided to SCO.
      SCO has filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit, claiming IBM violated its license with SCO by placing parts of SCO's Unix computer operating system source code into the code for Linux, a freely distributed system that is developed and enhanced by contributors worldwide. IBM and other companies make computers that use Linux. The IBM/SCO contract allowed IBM to use Unix internally but prohibited Unix from being transferred outside IBM.

      The high-profile case is being closely watched by the tech community because of its possible ramifications to IBM, SCO and Linux, as well as other companies, including Microsoft Corp., whose products compete with Linux.
      SCO attorney Brent Hatch told Wells that SCO should be given more time to depose 36 people at Intel, Oracle and The Open Group because of delays in doing so that were out of SCO's control. "They did not cooperate with us one iota," he said of Intel.
      Hatch said SCO needed the depositions in order to address issues that came up in other depositions that occurred "late in the game."
      But Wells ruled that the deadline for depositions was spelled out in an October court order. In the middle of the hearing, she said that if she were to accept SCO's argument, then court orders "would have no meaning."

      Wells said SCO gave inadequate notice of the depositions and inadequate time for Intel to prepare for them. While Hatch said that Intel received notice Jan. 12 about the upcoming depositions and therefore had time to prepare, Intel and IBM argued successfully that the actual deposition subpoenas came Jan. 26, a day before the depositions were to occur.
      IBM attorney Todd Shaughnessy said that gave Intel less than a day to produce documents and prepare 36 witnesses for depositions to occur at 9 a.m. the next day. An Intel attorney said the Jan. 12 notices contained very broad topics and many technical errors.
      "SCO should have noticed them up earlier," Wells concluded.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

hattip to Groklaw:

SCO's Motion to Depose Denied; Motion to Compel Denied w/o Prejudice -
Updated 5, Friday 07:26 PM

[E. Pluribus Unum]

More stalling tactics. All SCO can hope for is for the judge to make a misstep and open the door for an appeal, which is why the judge is bending over backwards every time SCO submits another spurious motion.

But the lawyers are getting paid, which is what the whole thing is about in the first place.

[Paladin2]

ping.

[putupjob]

SCO is a very out of date avant garde operation from the 1980's. They are now officially irrelevant. Much of this junk must be from greed VC trying to recoup investments related to supporting a bunch of arrogant computer geeks who stole most of what they sold.

[tubebender]

SCO ping...

[ShadowAce]

Late since I wasn't on FR all weekend....

[N3WBI3]

SCO attorney Brent Hatch told Wells that ... "They did not cooperate with us one iota," he said of Intel.

Maybe give them some notice next time..

[antiRepublicrat]

She did give SCO 30 days to file a renewed motion but said it must "narrowly" define areas that have not been covered in documents IBM already has provided to SCO.

Judge Wells is dreaming. SCO always does anything it can to keep from narrowly defining anything in this case. Any reasonable person might think SCO has learned its lesson about deadlines after losing on the subpoena thing, but then this is SCO we're talking about.

Any bets on whether they'll try to pull another fast one with that deadline?

[antiRepublicrat]

Maybe give them some notice next time..

I like the part where the IBM attorney said he'd kept asking SCO what was to come up in the hearing, but always got an "I don't know," only to have four items show up in email that morning. He said he expected to get "sandbagged" by SCO, and he did, and the judge was NOT happy.

Judge Wells seems to have infinite patience and the ability to keep her cool. I'm sure SCO is hoping for a blow-up, but they're not going to get it.

[stripes1776]

"SCO should have noticed them up earlier," Wells concluded.

Noticed them up? Is that a legal phrase, or just a judge butchering the English language?

[N3WBI3]

Boy were you ever right about IBM being on the ropes

/sarcasm

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

SCO has some new offerings:

Dear SCO Partner,

*******************************

Dear SCO Partner,

You asked for it. You've got it! Leads, that's right, leads. With the introduction of Me Inc., at the CES show in Las Vegas, as well as exposure at the National Retail Federation (NRF) in New York and the National Association of Television Program Executives in January, we have leads coming out of our ears. We want you to have those leads. Please contact your local SCO sales representative to find out how you can qualify to receive these Me Inc. leads and make money with Me Inc. There was fantastic interest in this new mobile technology, particularly in the Sports and Entertainment markets. Get into Me Inc. now so you can get your piece of the action. More information on Me Inc. can be found here: www.sco.com/products/meinc/.

We are very pleased with the growing interest in the SCO + MySQL solution that was announced in January and demonstrated in New York at the NRF show. This solution is growing in popularity among many of our current customers. You can find out more here www.sco.com/products/mysql/ as well as download a migration white paper.

There is a lot happening at SCO in 2006. With the upcoming General Availability release of Me Inc. in the next week as well as improving relationships with major database vendors on our SCO UNIX product lines, SCO is offering partners greater opportunities to make money. SCO values its channel partners and strongly believes in the value they provide to customers. Thank you for your continued loyalty. We look forward to success in Q2 of 2006.

Best regards,
Craig Bushman
Director, Marketing

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Apparently there was an announcement today, discussion on Groklaw....about this:

********************************

Welcome to EdgeClick Park

Along with the Me Inc Rich Mobility Services, SCO is introducing an exciting new place to do business on the web: www.edgeclickpark.com. EdgeClick Park will be a place where you can sell your own custom mobile services to the fastest growing segment of the IT industry—the mobile workers. Starting with the Me Inc. Mobility Center, this web portal will be the place where:

• You can subscribe to and manage an ever-growing collection of Me Inc. rich mobility services for your smart phones, PDAs and laptops. See and hear how Me Inc. is being used in the realms of sports, music, healthcare and business.
• Solution providers can market and provision high performance mobile services utilizing advanced EdgeClick technology.
• Businesses can submit Requests for Proposals for custom solutions.
• Developers can find all the tools, infrastructure components and support they need to securely extend enterprise applications to handheld devices or create entirely new solutions for businesses or consumers.

EdgeClick Park is just coming online. Come back often to see what new offerings are available. If you are interested in having your product or services offered on EdgeClick Park, contact your local SCO sales rep.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See #13 & #14.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

For those lurkers not aware of Groklaw see this:

Headlines

[thinkthenpost]

Is anyone aware if SCO offered any narrow motions at the end of the 30 days?

Thanks