
SCO/Novell Lawsuit Is Over, SCO Loses - davidw
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100610161411160
======
grellas
I did a detailed comment a while back summarizing the issues and the
convoluted history of this case (see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230340>).

In 1996, Novell sold UNIX-related rights to SCO but specifically _excluded_
all copyrights and all patents from that sale - meaning that Novell continued
to own all such rights.

Less than a year later, though, the parties did an amendment that described
what Novell was holding back as follows: "All copyrights and trademarks,
except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the
Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the
acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies."

The wildly ambiguous language here ("except for the copyrights . . . required
for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and
UnixWare technologies") - together with SCO's greed and venality - is what
spawned years of wasteful litigation. Weak as its claims were, SCO was able to
use "rights" it claimed from this language to derive equally weak claims that
its supposed rights were being violated by this or that trivial element within
Linux so as to constitute copyright infringement.

This final judgment in a key trial, then, is a tremendous outcome for the open
source community. It kills all cases at their root by imposing a definitive
judgment that SCO acquired no UNIX copyrights of any kind and, without that,
its foundation for mounting assaults against Linux and the rest is completely
undone (without regard to what details of Linux are alleged to infringe).

Two caveats:

1\. Apart from SCO's dire financial condition, there would be nothing
preventing it from appealing and continuing the mess on the multi-pronged
fronts on which it has been fought. SCO (in its current form) is essentially
an investor-backed operation that sought in recent years primarily to
capitalize on this series of lawsuits and it could theoretically continue to
do so if the investors had the appetite to continue funding the mess. It is
widely believed that this is now a venture that is spent, however, and let us
hope this is true.

2\. This matter is now safe as long as Novell or some other trusted party
continues to hold the UNIX copyrights. But Novell itself is in trouble and its
assets may soon be acquired by private equity firms who might in turn sell
such assets to trolls (see <http://url4.eu/3p37m>). Again, let's hope not.

That said, this victory does appear to be complete and is cause for
celebration.

~~~
ghshephard
Third Caveat - SCO does seem to keep going and going. A bit more history -

o A while back there was a Judge verdict, that, as a matter of _law_, SCO did
not own the copyrights. (There was no copyright transfer, ergo, the copyrights
had not been transferred. That issue is now going to the supreme court, and
actually may have a chance of being reviewed - the question is - "Do you need
a copyright transfer for copyrights to be considered transferred"

o That was overturned, and it went before a Jury Trial. Once again, the Jury
agreed - no transfer of copyrights.

o SCO asked, as a matter of Law, a ruling that clearly the copyrights had been
transferred. Denied.

Now, we'll see what else is up SCO's sleeve. Admittedly they are in
bankruptcy, and the Bankruptcy official has been put in charge of the
organization - so presumably future behavior will be profit maximizing and
somewhat rational.

------
benologist
TechCrunch posting excerpts to spread traffic out across their blogs is
annoying.

Especially when it's their gadget blog posting on a non-gadget topic, and
particularly when it's just summarizing a 3rd blog anyway:

<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100610161411160>

~~~
wyclif
Now that you mention it, I'm starting to hate how HN users post links to
TechCrunch's coverage of some new project instead of posting the project
site-- or, in some cases, the link to the write-up that they are excerpting. I
prefer to bypass the middleman.

------
bad_user
> _a number of patents involved around Unix copyright_

I'm pretty sure that's a syntax error.

~~~
sabat
Indeed. The SCO lawsuits were brought over (wholly invented) claims that Linux
contained copyrighted code "stolen" from source code that SCO claimed to own.
No genuine incidents of "stolen" code were ever discovered as far as I am
aware, and SCO was shown not to own the copyrights to the source code anyway.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
The examples of `stolen code' were #define:s and things of that nature, which
are so trivial that they're bound to be reproduced almost verbatim.

~~~
davidw
And that's when they finally came out. They talked and talked and showed
journalists who were sworn not to reveal what they'd seen in detail, and so
on, and didn't show any code for the longest time.

This is one of those cases where I'm curious what, if anything, will happen to
the CEO. He didn't just make some honest mistakes, he really fucked things up,
running SCO into the ground, and causing a not insignificant amount of trouble
for Linux and open source companies at the time. Sure, he lost his job last
year, but so did a lot of other people.

~~~
rbanffy
Last time I checked, darlbehindbars.com was available.

It still seems so.

------
crad
As a target of SCO's extortion efforts in 1994, I am happy that this is
finally over.

~~~
simc
2004 you mean.

~~~
crad
Heh yeah... If I was going to make that mistake I should have at least gone
for 1984.

------
redsymbol
Wow, what a release to see this finally end. Seems like I've been watching
this insanity drag on for most of my adult life.

So... time to CELEBRATE! Where are the "SCOwned" parties going to be? I know
there's going to be some here in SF this weekend... where else?

:)

~~~
tomjen3
I know how you feel. I graduated elementary school the same year the lawsuit
started, so I have been following the case all my adult life.

Personally I am just waiting for /. to break the story, it seems a fitting end
to it.

------
jeroen
The full article is here: [http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/06/11/sconovell-
suit-is-over-...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/06/11/sconovell-suit-is-over-
sco-loses/)

------
philjackson
Excellent, that's one box checked. Now all I need to do is play Duke Nukem
Forever and two things I thought I'd never see, I will have seen.

------
CamperBob
Don't forget who bankrolled Darl's little fishing expedition. Just more of
Steve Ballmer's celebrated leadership in action.

