

SCO v. IBM Is Officially Reopened - rpledge
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2013061516065416

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homosaur
Okay, I read this article and what of the comments I could stomach with the
awful commenting system on there and I guess it's just that I've tried to
flush this entire thing from my mind after spending years of concern about it.
I understand that the judge decided to allow a reopening of certain aspects of
the case v. IBM because he decided it was improperly closed.

But from what I understood, the decision v. Novell essentially stripped SCO of
any claims of copyright to Unix. Now I know the IBM lawsuit revolved around
some slightly different issues from the Novell one, but if SCO has no
copyright claims, how is it even paying counsel to sue someone?

Is this just a leftover pile of money that's literally doing nothing but
funding a series of doomed lawsuits?

I understand from a strictly legal standpoint they are allowed to go on with
certain claims but from a practical standpoint, I just don't get it. If there
is a leftover pile of money, wouldn't it be smarter to actually, you know,
invest this in creating an actual business rather than have it be a lawyer
welfare fund?

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btilly
The company is bankrupt. Their only remaining asset of note is this lawsuit.
As I understand it, the judge is letting this lawsuit go forward in the hope
of extracting enough money to pay off the creditors more fully than they
otherwise could.

So yeah, it is a pile of leftover money that is pursuing the lawsuit to the
bitter end prior to handing back what little remains to the various creditors.

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jlgreco
Realistically, aren't they only going to rack up more debt that they will have
to pay off, in the form of lawyer fees?

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btilly
I think that they can't rack up debt because nobody in their right minds will
lend them money. They will just pay less to existing creditors.

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sigzero
What a waste of court resources.

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ggchappell
Okay, time for a serious question.

IBM has money, and SCO's lawyers gave them a fee cap. So this endless
litigation is not wrecking anyone's life. Mostly it's just an annoyance to IBM
and to SCO's lawyers.

But suppose it weren't IBM. Suppose SCO were suing me. Or you. Being hounded
for over a decade by the ghost of a company, which remains in existence
_solely for the purpose of suing you_ sounds horrible. And since I/you may
very well have done nothing wrong, this is an unacceptable situation.

Now, I would hope that a good judge would realize this. Just about all the
articles I've read concerning this case are about the court asking SCO to
clarify something. And, indeed, here we read:

> So it's going to go like this:

> 1\. SCO must file a brief statement identifying the claims ....

So I would imagine that our hypothetical good judge would stick up for me/you
by simply saying to SCO, "You need to make a clear statement about what you
are claiming, and we're not going to waste any more time with you until you
do."

But then I wonder why the judge couldn't simply have done that in this case,
too -- a decade ago.

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anigbrowl
Clearly the only sensible thing to do at this point is for the court to grant
SCO title to Blackacre in lieu of economic damages.

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zephjc
SCO v. IBM, aka "The Thing That Wouldn't Die"

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dllthomas
_sigh_

Further dragging through the mud of the name of a once great company.

