LWN: Comments on "Novell challenges SCO"

Another Big Lie

ncm — Wed, 28 May 2003 17:43:09 +0000

Now SCO is claiming that the case is about breach of contract, not copyright or trade secrets. That makes so much nonsense of their previous remarks that Suse, Red Hat, et al., are next.

What contract are these other companies supposed to have with SCO that puts them at risk?

SCO claims that it can win a copyright fight

anandrajan — Wed, 28 May 2003 17:21:46 +0000

Please note that SCO is *still* claiming (after Novell's PR) that it owns the relevant copyrights. This apparently came up during the conference call today. Seen on Slashdot. Not clear about their position on patents.

After reading through 499 slashdot comments on this topic---some of which featured the SCO stockholders conference call---the sense I get is that SCO thinks it will be successful via litigation in getting the relevant copyrights since all four of the original people (2 from SCO and 2 froom Novell) involved in signing the exclusive Unix distribution license that SCO got from Novell thought that the deal included copyrights. SCO has recently asked for transfer of copyrights from Novell which Novell has refused to do.

At this time, both Novell and Perens are indicating that SCO just has an exclusive UNIX distribution license with Novell retaining UNIX copyrights and patents.

Anand

Novell challenges SCO

rfunk — Wed, 28 May 2003 16:39:17 +0000

More updates -- SCO has replied to Novell, and Perens has commented on that reply.

SCO says it's a contract issue. Perens says that still can only be based on trade secrets.

Novell challenges SCO

Baylink — Wed, 28 May 2003 16:01:32 +0000

Yes, it *does* change the basis of the suit.

In civil litigation, there is a concept known as "standing" -- do you have
"standing to sue" another party? The concept is analogous to that of "an
insurable interest" in that industry -- if you don't have an insurable
interest in someone or something (by relation, employment or ownership)
you won't be allowed to take out an insurance policy on it.

A similar concept applies here -- if SCO is merely a licensee of the
copyrights in the Unix sources, any duty they might have to file suit over
their release would be subrogate to the actual *owner* of those
copyrights, which in this case is apparently Novell.

Note: IANAL, I just play one on the 'net.

Novell challenges SCO

southey — Wed, 28 May 2003 15:05:29 +0000

But this doesn't change the basis of the suit - essentially that IBM provided SCO code to Linux! All the rest is just smoke as SCO is trying to attack Linux and the various groups, now including the Open Group and Novell, are clearing that nicely!

Let me get this straight.....

dkite — Wed, 28 May 2003 14:35:05 +0000

Trade secrets, which they were distributing in source code anyone could look at.

Let me get this straight.....

blaisepascal — Wed, 28 May 2003 14:11:04 +0000

Novell owns the copyrights and remaining patents on UNIX System V. The Open Group owns the trademark on the term UNIX. There are no trade secrets remaining with regard to UNIX because of how open UNIX has been in the past.

What's left? What, exactly, does SCO own to sue over?