Bonum Certa Men Certa

Copyrights and Patents for Competitive Manipulation by Proxy

"On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO's strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO's financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital."

--Bruce Perens



Summary: SCO's proxy battle is not over and more stories emerge which serve as reminders of proxy wars

According to SCO specialist/expert Groklaw, IBM has responded to this continued effort by SCO to revive litigation more than ten years after it started. It is being summarised as follows:"IBM has filed its response [PDF] to SCO's motion asking for reconsideration of the Court's order denying SCO's motion to reopen the SCO v. IBM case. I have it as text for you.



"Is SCO selling a lie again?""IBM tells Judge David Nuffer that it doesn't oppose reopening the case at all -- in fact it says it should happen. IBM has an proposed outline on how to proceed thereafter. Its plan differs from SCO's."

The Microsoft booster, in the mean time, took McBride's claims at face value and wrote: "Darl McBride, the former chief executive officer of SCO, says he was offered $2 million by the Utah attorney general in May 2009 in exchange for taking down a website criticizing an area business person. Still pursuing the years-long legal battle against Novell and IBM over Unix and Linux intellectual property, SCO needed money at the time."

"Microsoft mostly had the press on its side when it engaged in rackteering, spinning that as ‘licensing’, so the press was complicit."Pamela Jones wrote in her site that "So many people sent me this url, I am posting the story. Otherwise I wasn't going to. I don't personally believe for a moment that this is the entire story. Darl has always been good at getting the media to print what *he* says is the story, invariably that he's been wronged, but in time we get the rest of the story. For example, while he claimed for years that SCO owned the copyrights to Unix, it turned out to be untrue. So all the "wrongs" done were done to the media and court victims of SCO. So the real question is, why is he wanting the media to tell his side of the story now, after all this time? I note the article links to the Salt Lake Tribune, which says the FBI is investigating. That's why I was going to wait until we have more information about all sides of the story before reaching any conclusions or even linking to the Darl McBride PR."

And later, in the middle of the weekend, she added: "Here's a question: on what basis would Darl McBride ask for $2 million to shut down a web site that the target alleged was defamatory? Or any web site? Allegedly the target owed $200,000 or so, although he denied it, so where does the $2 million figure come in? Why would he even agree to such a deal, if he did?"

"How likely is it that trolls like these wage war at the behest of someone else."Is SCO selling a lie again? And if so, how about fact-checking? Are mere allegations guarantee of news coverage? Maybe it depends on who's doing it. Microsoft mostly had the press on its side when it engaged in rackteering, spinning that as 'licensing', so the press was complicit.

It is worth mentioning that the company dismantled by Singer's Mafia (Elliott Associates, the vulture fund) shows its effect in weaponising patents, having just seen patents (and copyright also) on load balancers being used for extortion. One report says: "Of 33 prospective jurors that were considered, five of them had patents of their own. (This trial was in the same court where a patent-owning jury foreman was likely instrumental to Apple's blockbuster patent win over Samsung last summer.) No word yet on whether any terms of the settlement will be made public."

This comes amid intervention by the same thugs who gave Novell's patents to Apple and Microsoft (CPTN). Motorola came under fire from another vulture fund, Mr. Icahn, before it nearly gave its patents to Microsoft and Apple (Google needed to grossly overpay to outbid this duopoly of patent aggressors).

"Remember which company is scanning a lot of literature (it's not Microsoft, which dropped these endeavours)."Here is an update from a case of patent trolls fighting Google/Motorola and another naming of patent trolls by the FRAND Blog that showed Apple and Microsoft ganging up against Android using FRAND/patent pools, whose purpose is to raise the cost of Android. The blog says: "Today brought the publication of what looks like is the first lawsuit of its kind — a complaint brought by a state attorney general (here, Vermont’s) against a non-practicing entity, alleging that the NPE’s patent assertion activities constitute unfair and deceptive trade practices under Vermont state law. (The suit was actually filed May 8, but it became publicly available today when the defendant was served.) The complaint was filed against MPHJ Technology Investments LLC, a company that has been characterized by some as the “scanner troll” — because it has sent demand letters to thousands of businesses that use scan-to-email technology."

How likely is it that trolls like these wage war at the behest of someone else. Remember which company is scanning a lot of literature (it's not Microsoft, which dropped these endeavours).

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part II: Lying to the IRS is a Big Issue
The OSI of today pretends to be something that it is not
Bloodlust and Love of Blades (Fascination With Murder) Nothing New Among Microsofters
Violence is not a joke and no group is magically entitled to make such "jokes"
Links 01/06/2025: Bird Flu, Food Price Inflation, and Growing US-China Hostilities
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: "Vibe Coding" Turns Out to be a Fraud and Amazon Merits Boycott, Argue Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: "Stardust" and Ideal PC Setup
Links for the day
Links 01/06/2025: Windows TCO, Openwashing, "It's FOSS" Still Promoting Microsoft
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/06/2025: Simplification and Networks Everywhere
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 31, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 31, 2025
Google Bribes EFF. EFF Promotes LLM Slop as 'Fair Use'. To GAFAM It's a Low-Cost Lobby Hedge.
So the bribes pay off ("slush fund") and the word spreads
Slopwatch: Fake Text and Images, Financial Bubbles, and Scams in "Intelligent" Clothing
Sometimes what they mean by "AI" is just cheap labour somewhere else, as we discussed in IRC a few hours ago
Why Microsoft is Collapsing (Similar to What's Happening at IBM), As Insiders See It
IBM seems like one heck of a mess
Reliable Computing Means Free (Libre) Computing
Sites that want to promote security ought to deal with the biggest issues
Links 31/05/2025: US Court Orders Sides With RFE/RL, War Updates From Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/05/2025: ARM Server and power_supply Subsystem
Links for the day
Links 31/05/2025: Slop Stigmatised as Disinformation, Catalyst/Driver of "Death of Communication"
Links for the day
Common Sense 101: Do Not Write Blog Posts Saying You Want to Murder Colleagues (or Yourself)
Only crazy people would think stabbings are a joke
Microsoft Bankruptcy
"Microsoft unit in Russia to file for bankruptcy, database shows"
Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Links 31/05/2025: Microsoft-Connected Builder.ai is a Fraud and US is Purging Students Based on Race/Nationality
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Limmat, Doomscrollers, and Arguments Parsing
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 30, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 30, 2025
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025