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back to article Novell aims SCO tussle at the Supremes

Novell wants the US Supreme Court to review its seemingly-never-ending legal tete-a-tete with SCO over the famous UNIX and UNIXware copyrights. As noticed by Groklaw, Novell has filed a motion with a federal appeals court asking for a 90-day stay in the SCO case so it can file a writ of certiorari petition with the Supremes. …

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  1. Gil Grissum
    Linux

    SCO Stablize Cash Flow??

    HOW??

    They don't have the means to extort licensing fees for Linux and no company in their right mind would buy Unix from SCO, so how do they intend to make money? Can we just put this rabid dog down for good please?? SCO has no usefulness to anyone in the marketplace. It's time for this nonsense to end!!

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    lawyer for SCO..

    ... one of the last jobs for life!!

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  3. Lars Silver badge
    Unhappy

    And somebody has to keep on funding

    "So we'll have to keep writing. And you'll have to keep reading.",

    and somebody has to keep on funding.

    I have a feeling that I will belong to the first having had enough reading.

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  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    FAIL

    I'm sure SCO would hire Doug Feith in a heartbeat

    "SCO was quite sure that the deal included the Unix copyrights as well - so sure that it started waving them at the Linux industry,"

    Implying that Linux infringes any AT&T Unix copyrights.

    If I remember well, at the start of this SCO cancertrip, the claim was that "Linux had copied" "thousands and thousands" of lines, which was demonstrated with a PowerPoint slideshow showing similar C comments and the identical numbering of the process signals. This was later whittled down to 25 lines or so.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    @jeremy 3

    Yeah - but only for the life of SCO, and that can't be much longer.

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  6. JimL

    not reversed, remanded

    I'd quibble with the analysis that the appeals court "reversed" the copyright rulings. They remanded for trial on various grounds, feeling some of the issues weren't ripe for summary judgement by the district court only. SCO would probably still lose at trial on exactly the same grounds as the district court initially ruled. SCO didn't win on any points - indeed the appeals court affirmed that SCO owes Novell millions of dollars - SCO merely got a partial "do-over".

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Assholes

    I don't care whether SCO bought the copyrights or not. They tried to screw Linux for Microsoft, that's enough for me.

    In any case, copyright transfer has to be in writing or else it's a he says, you say, which can't be resolved by a court. Seems the judge who retired got cold feet or .....$......

    And they issued their own Linux, Caldera, for a number of years so they themselves did put all the code in the public domain under the GPL, and surely cannot take that back.

    Not to mention that they have never exposed the infringing code, which I thought was an absolute obligation in law in order to be able to pursue a case for infringement.

    Time to finally go where ever bankrupt companies go.

    As I said - - Assholes.

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  8. Mike Moyle

    Seems to me...

    That the person that SCO SHOULD b suing is the lawyer who represented them during the negotiation of that contract..!

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  9. Shannon Jacobs
    Stop

    Bring out the wooden stake

    Please, someone please drive a stake through the heart of this zombie SCO. Enough is enough already.

    I sure hope that moron former CEO (whose name I've already forgotten) didn't get any sort of golden parachute when they finally dumped him. Unless they make parachutes out of cement.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    MS funds

    "Following its bankruptcy filing, SCO says that within the next month, it will find a way to stabilize its cash flow. "

    Meaning someone is paying them to do so. 10 to 1 that it's Microsoft (of course through some middlemen, but that's irrelevant).

    They aren't selling anything, they owe millions to Novell and they don't currently own anything (being bankrupt), so outside funding is the only option. But who else than MS would do that?

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    SCO's blind spot

    "In 1995, Novell sold its Unix trademarks and other assets to an earlier incarnation of SCO, and SCO was quite sure that the deal included the Unix copyrights as well" ...

    SCO was quite sure if you manage to ignore the bit that says " Excluded Assets: All Copyrights"

    Not to forget that this is not Santa Cruz version of SCO but actually the Linux company Caldera who actually distributed the code they claim they stole from themselves .

    How much longer will this go on ......... The microsoft money ran out years ago, what props this zombie up - oh wait, its the money the court found they stole from Novell.

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  12. jake Silver badge

    This is getting old.

    Trademark and copyright are completely different things.

    Either Novell EXPLICITLY sold off the copyright for UNIX, or it didn't. The fact that it sold the trademark for the name doesn't come close to releasing control of the copyright for the code. This thing should have been over and done with years ago.

    Can't the fucking judge(s) read the fucking contract and come to a fucking decision?

    Oh, wait, there are no judges with a clue what "technology" is. As soon as you mention anything more complicated than TELEX or FAX, most lawyers turn their brains off, just like Great Aunt Mable. (Don't believe me? Try drafting a reasonable contract to update the computers in a law office ... never again!).

    Either way, nobody I know in the world of computers and networking will ever enter into a contract with any of the folks in charge of the entity known as "SCO" in recent years ... including their lawyers. Burnt bridges & all that.

    What a fucking waste of time and money. Idiots. All of 'em.

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  13. Mike Pellatt

    messy copyright ownership

    @Mike Moyle - I don't think NewSCO can - they weren't party to that contract. And the contract betwen OldSCO and Caldera-Now-Renamed-SCO should have, but doesn't, address the issue. This is more a case of lack of due diligence on Caldera's part when taking on SCO's Unix business. Not, of course, that they had any reason to care about that until they decided their precccciious IP had more value than Proper Work.

    There is also a view that the Novell-SCO contract was deliberately obfuscated because Unix was (and is) an almighty mish-mash of different entities' copyrights, and that what Novell actually owned was fairly minimal. Which would beg the question of why they paided $300m to AT&T for it. The AT&T-BSD settlement showed how much unattributed BSD code had found its way into SysV (lots)

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  14. Herby

    Bankruptcy....

    Maybe SCO should file under Chapter 7 (liquidation). Then we can all chip in 2 cents (in total) which ought to cover what SCO is worth and GIVE it to the public.

    Until THAT happens SCO is on life support (and brain dead) waiting for the plug to be pulled.

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  15. Sam Liddicott

    per user licenses

    When SCO/Caldera started doing per-user/per-seat license for Linux I knew they not going to get very far.

    Bela Lubkin was one of the great things of SCO. Any one remember him?

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  16. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Gates Horns

    So who *would* go on funding this mess?

    Who wants to spread maximum FUD?

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  17. Schultz
    Coffee/keyboard

    Parallel Universe

    So it's true: there exist an infinite number of parallel universes:

    One where companies create real stuff (computers).

    One where companies create virtual stuff (software for computers).

    One where companies create legal documents about virtual stuff.

    One where dead companies create legal documents about virtual stuff.

    ... get me out of here!

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  18. Liam Johnson

    Lawyers

    Of course the amazing thing is the lawyers on both sides who got paid a ton of money to write this ambiguous contract, then get paid another ton of money to take it through the courts to clarify what they should have done in the first place.

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  19. Oninoshiko

    @liam

    The contract isn't that ambiguous. It doesn't say anything about the copyrights, therefore it doesn't transfer them. It also doesnt say anything about if the CEO of Novell has to personally provide "favors" to the board of SCO, that doesn't make it ambiguous in that matter, it means there are no obligations.

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