IBM's summary judgment motion

Posted Aug 18, 2004 15:18 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

IBM reminds the judge of the principle in contract law that when there is any ambiguity in a contract, it must be decided against the interest of whoever wrote the contract. In this case, AT&T wrote the contract, so if (as SCO claims) it is ambiguous and could be interpreted to give SCO ownership of all of AIX, but could also be interpreted not to, then the judge must assume the latter.

This comes after they have established that the latter is the only plausible interpretation anyway, by default under copyright law, and also by deposition of its authors, and also by appeal to another principle that an absurd interpretation cannot be assumed.

Both principles are probably contradicted ("amended") by reams of case law, so they don't make their argument depend on them.