"To Novell's knowledge..."? [LWN.net]

"To Novell's knowledge..."?

Posted May 29, 2003 2:50 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599)
Parent article: The SCO case gets weirder

As much as I'm heartened and amused by the latest turn of events, I find it a little troubling that Novell's CEO doesn't seem to know for certain whether his company's agreement with SCO includes the copyrights or not. If the wording of the agreement is clear on the matter, say so; if it's ambiguous, well...good luck. (And if you haven't actually reviewed the agreement with your lawyers, you definitely have no business making press releases about it.)

The fact that Novell has refused to transfer the copyrights isn't necessarily material; if a court were to find that they were, in fact, covered under the terms of the agreement, then Novell could find itself on the receiving end of a hefty breach-of-contract lawsuit.

But maybe that's just me. (Only a few things are just me...)

Greg Roelofs

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They have to say that.

Posted May 29, 2003 5:03 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

It's legalese for "we checked our paperwork and this is what we found", I think. It's been awhile since I did any heavy study of law (IANAL, but I did take law classes in college, for what little that's worth). My best guess here is that Novell is basically saying "We have these documents here which say that we still have the copyrights and patent rights, so unless you've got some proof otherwise, this is the best of our knowledge." Or something. Again, I'm not a lawyer, just an amateur legal scholar of sorts.

"To Novell's knowledge..."?

Posted May 29, 2003 15:03 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

It is standard legaleeze to say that 'unless someone pulls a rabbit out our ear, we have gone through everything and double checked it to our lawyers satisfaction.' It is very hard to find a rabbit up someone's ear, but quantum mechanically it is possible for one to possibly appear in one.

"To Novell's knowledge..."?

Posted May 30, 2003 14:44 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

> (Only a few things are just me...)

<giggle>