Summary: Will AttachMSFT decide to go against Microsoft or just bury the case instead? What about the SCO case? We survey some of the latest developments inside the company

NOVELL has the opportunity to sue Microsoft and win. Well, actually, it is AttachMSFT that has this opportunity, but what will be the fate of this long-standing case? Microsoft loves to appeal endlessly until the other side gives up and/or goes bust. It is an inherent flaw in the legal system.

In the latest round of antitrust lawsuit we have Novell winning an appeal, as we noted earlier this month. Here are the legal papers and here is some assorted coverage [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. There is also a lot of coverage from Microsoft spinners [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], who would love to pretend that the age of the case somehow makes Microsoft "innocent". Longtime Microsoft booster Todd Bishop says that Attachmate is the "Proud owner of a 20-year-old Microsoft antitrust dispute" and other reports that mostly reuse text say:

In ruling on Tuesday May 3rd, the appeals court dismissed that judgment made in a lower court, saying that the previous agreement with Caldera covered a different set of products. Hence, Novell can proceed with the long-running antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, reports Reuters (News - Alert), an International multimedia news agency.

In this case -- just like in the SCO case -- it is difficult to just speculate whether or not there will be persistence after large-scale layoffs. We sincerely hope that both cases will still be pursued. There are other legal cases and what probably matters most to AttachMSFT is whether these are worth money, not reputation.

In other news, Novell no longer appears in financial news, for obvious reaxons. It is not really a publicly-traded company when the acquisition is over (finalised sale now), which leaves a lot of the internal activities undisclosed. We expect to have very little to say about Novell in the future. Novell was taken off the S&P (which is a fact still to be mentioned in Murdoch's paper, even a week late).

Novell's insecure software will most likely survive, even old products like eDirectory, which was mentioned here very recently regarding malfunctions and errors. There are Novell placements in ZDNet, but these too advertise proprietary software.

Here is some news about Paul Singer the very unethical, reckless man who essentially put Novell on sale against the company's will:

One song Elliott Management’s Paul Singer still isn’t singing is the praises of the Dodd-Frank bill, especially its attempts to identify which institutions could pose systemic risk to the financial markets.

“I think it’s entirely nutty, and I’m using that term in the most technical sense,” the hedge fund manager said Friday during a panel discussion on the “too big to fail” legislation at the American Bankruptcy Institute’s annual New York conference in Midtown Manhattan.

That made people laugh, but Singer, whose $17 billion firm is one of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s largest creditors, said seriously that big banks still have trillions of dollars in derivatives on their books that still require only modest disclosure.

This vulture fund of his is no better. That is a subject we explored before (see links below). Novell is not his last victim and based on his past deeds he is better off arrested like Madoff. ⬆

1. Novell May be Going Private, Hedge Fund Has Cash
2. Analyst Expects Microsoft Bid to Buy Novell
3. Ron Hovsepian Receives Another Large Lump of Cash as Novell Sale Looms
4. GNU/Linux-Savvy Writers View Elliot Associates as Bad Neighbourhood
5. Firm Behind Novell Bid Has Shady Past, Could be Tied to Microsoft (Paul E. Singer's 'Vulture Fund')
6. Simon Phipps: “Seems Even With Microsoft’s Support Novell Couldn’t Cut It”
7. Vulture Fund Still the Only Bidder for Novell