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Red Hat waiting for IBM

Red Hat waiting for IBM

Posted Mar 11, 2010 1:44 UTC (Thu) by jeleinweber (subscriber, #8326)
In reply to: Red Hat waiting for IBM by dmarti
Parent article: Meanwhile, back in Utah...

Yes; I probably oversimplified. SCO vs IBM won't restart until both the SCO vs Novell trial and the SuSE vs SCO arbitration are done. The time-line on that is very uncertain, as no one is betting that the second SCO vs Novell trial won't result in a second appeal, and SCO might end up in chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation at any moment. SCO vs IBM has been reduced by summary judgments and lack of SCO evidence to consisting mostly of IBM counterclaims. RedHat is probably waiting on everything, including SCO vs IBM. The first SCO vs Novell bench trial ended with SCO owing Novell about $3.7 million, which was upheld during the appeal, but has not been paid - a fact that may play into Novell's "unclean hands" defense during the current second jury trial. The smart money would bet that all the other cases will also end with SCO owing SuSE, IBM, and RedHat money too.

Given that SCO originally lost to Novell in the bench trial, it's not terribly likely that a partial do-over in front of a jury will produce a different result - they don't have any new evidence to present.

For SCO to get a big win from IBM, they have to improbably convince a series of courts, arbitrators, and juries that:
a) the Santa Cruz contract with Novell transfered copyrights in spite of explicit clauses excluding them and lack of a legally required written list of which ones would be involved - under California law, which is very particular about copyright transfers due to many cases from Hollywood
b) another contract clause allowing Novell to waive claims against IBM should somehow be ignored
c) the copyright assignments and waivers in the UnitedLinux contract Caldera signed should be ignored
d) SCO distributing the stuff it is complaining about under the GPL should be ignored
e) the fact that after applying standard software copyright case rules (abstract-filtration-comparison test, scene-a-faire, public domain, compliance with published standards, SCO's own donations, ...) SCO will have no infringed materials
f) SCO's damages from SCO's weak claims are somehow much larger than IBM's damages from IBM's strong counterclaims

Linux users who aren't fascinated by our legal system can probably just relax and ignore the whole thing.


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Jurors who don't know any tech stuff

Posted Mar 16, 2010 1:31 UTC (Tue) by golding (guest, #32795) [Link]

The trouble at the moment is the jury were deliberately picked on not having
any tech knowledge, so what they decide may well depend on what side bamboozles them the most with double-speak.


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