A quick SCO update [LWN.net]

There has been action in a couple of the SCO Group's legal cases, so it's time for an update.

IBM has amended its counterclaims in response to SCO's second amended complaint. One of the patent claims has been dropped, and quite a bit of strong language has been added. For example, paragraph 60:

SCO further persisted in maintaining for nearly a year the unsound claim that IBM had misappropriated its trade secrets. Yet when pressed to identify a single trade secret that IBM allegedly misappropriated, SCO could not, even after being ordered to do so by the Court. SCO finally (and properly) abandoned this claim, upon which SCO's entire lawsuit was initially premised, in its Second Amended Complaint.

Several paragraphs describing Novell's claims and actions, including the claims to have retained the Unix copyrights, have been added. Some new claim language states:

IBM is entitled to a declaratory judgment pursuant to 28 U. C. 9 2201 that IBM does not infringe, induce the infringement of, or contribute to the infringement of any SCO copyright through its Linux activities, including its use, reproduction and improvement of Linux, and that some or all of SCO' s purported copyrights in UNIX are invalid and unenforceable.

If IBM obtains such a judgment, SCO's case is essentially over; all that will be left is SCO's defense against IBM's counterclaims.

SCO, meanwhile, has filed a motion to bifurcate the IBM trial. SCO would like to split IBM's patent charges into a separate, trial with its own schedule. SCO's claims that the patent case is unrelated to the Linux-related charges are not entirely without merit; this motion might just be granted.

In the Novell case, SCO has been trying to get the trial moved back to Utah state court where, one assumes, it believes it will get a more favorable hearing. Novell has filed a memorandum in opposition of this motion (available in PDF format) that minces no words; from the opening paragraph:

This Court has jurisdiction over SCO's slander of title action because in order for SCO to prevail, it must prove it owns the copyrights at issue, and its claim of ownership turns on an issue of federal law. SCO claims it owns these copyrights through assignment from Novell. Therefore, in order to prove its case, SCO must point to documents that transferred the copyrights from Novell. Federal copyright law determines the adequacy or inadequacy of documents as a legal instrument to transfer copyrights.

Novell then dedicates several pages of legalese to the destruction of SCO's arguments. From an outside point of view, Novell's arguments look hard to answer.

In the Red Hat case: nothing has happened, as usual.

Finally, SCO has announced that SCO Forum 2004 will be held August 1 to 3 in Las Vegas. Even here, the company is rather economical with the truth: "SCO Forum 2004 will highlight the company's 25th anniversary in bringing powerful UNIX software solutions to businesses around the world." The SCO Group, originally Caldera, has been incorporated since 1998 (though Caldera, in a different form, had been around since the early 1990's). This company will not be celebrating its 25th anniversary anytime soon.

In any case, the event could be amusing; one can well imagine that, by August, the tone will not be particularly upbeat. Mark your calendars.

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25th anniversery

Posted Apr 1, 2004 8:23 UTC (Thu) by vmlinuz (subscriber, #24) [Link]

The company currently going by the name The SCO Group is certainly not 25 years old. "The SCO Group" is the new name for the company previously known as Caldera (amongst other things) which has - as Jon correctly points out - only been incorporated since 1998, although it did exist before that. In 2001, Caldera bought the UNIX part of the company which was - at that time - known as SCO, or the Santa Cruz Operation. SCO, of course, was founded in 1979, making this year the 25th anniversary of SCO, not Caldera.

I attended some SCO 20th anniversary events. As an employee...

25th anniversery

Posted Apr 1, 2004 12:05 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

That page ignores the fact that the orange bar on the timeline hasn't disapeared. It still exists under the name Tarantella.

25th anniversery

Posted Apr 1, 2004 19:33 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Maybe you should have done a 40 second web search before claiming they are :)

25th anniversary

Posted Apr 2, 2004 20:15 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Here's some business organization perspective on the question of whether these guys can celebrate the 25th anniversary of "the company."

A corporation is not a company.

A name is not a company.

A company is a group of people working together. Sometimes, a company is operated by a corporation. Often, the company has a name -- sometimes multiple names, and the names change a lot.

In business, we tend to include the assets that a company uses in its business enterprise in our use of the word "company." That's not its fundamental meaning, though.

A company cannot technically be bought or sold. When we talk about buying a company, we almost always mean buying the assets of a company -- real estate, machinery, customer lists, rights to use names, etc. Often, there's some part of the deal that encourages employees of the company to continue doing the same work for the new owner of the assets. (e.g. the seller agrees to lay them all off and not hire them back for 5 years).

A company cannot technically "incorporate." That's a sloppy term used to mean the folks who own the company's assets form a corporation and sell all the assets of the company to the corporation in exchange for stock.

I would say if there has continuously been a body of people for the last 25 years, that body of people -- the company -- can celebrate a 25th anniversary. To the extent that there were periods where the body drastically changed membership (split, massive replacements, etc.), it can't. Dates of incorporation or asset transfers are irrelevant.

25th anniversery

Posted Apr 3, 2004 20:34 UTC (Sat) by The_Flatlander (guest, #19245) [Link]

The SCO Group has no choice but to celebrate its 25th Anniversery this year. Really, if they don't do it now, they never will, because *next* year, there won't be a SCO Group, let alone twenty years from now....

The Flatlander

I'm thinking of celebrating my 500th Birthday this year....