Bonum Certa Men Certa

SCO Wants Copyrights It Does Not Own

Amiga UNIX



Summary: SCO refuses to die and here is its latest confrontation with Novell

Having decided to focus only on litigation, SCO has also awoken for a moment and it filed an appeal brief against Novell. Groklaw, as usual, has the details and the pertinent documentation.

SCO has filed its appeal brief [PDF], appealing the decision in SCO v. Novell. Novell has until April 9 to file its brief in response, plus any appeal issues it might itself wish to raise.

Evidently, the court found SCO's first filing deficient, and so it told SCO [PDF] to correct the deficiencies, which it has done. One deficiency was that SCO failed to tell the appeals court why it felt oral argument was necessary. So, SCO now tells them, in essence, that the case is *complicated*.


Then, the copyright gig got resurrected, as Heise reported:

The SCO Group has filed an appeal against last years ruling that it did not buy the copyright to Unix from Novell. The company is hoping to overturn the judgement and resume its legal action against IBM and Linux. When SCO started to pursue IBM in court in 2003, Novell said that when it sold its Unix business to SCO in 1995 it retained copyright to the code and merely sold SCO a licence to use it. SCO then sued Novell over that claim.


This was also covered locally, in Utah (it's also here).

The SCO Group of Lindon has filed an appeal reasserting its ownership of the copyright of Unix computer operating system software, a move officers believe will get it back on track to pursue claims against IBM in a case that has riled the open source software community.

[...]

The SCO Group also is moving to sell its computer software business as part of its reorganization in bankruptcy court in Delaware. The company filed for bankruptcy after Kimball's 2008 ruling. After selling the software business to an outside party, SCO plans to continue to pursue its legal claims against IBM and others.


Regarding the above, wrote Groklaw:

Here's SCO's appeal brief [PDF] in SCO v. Novell as text. The Salt Lake Tribune has an article on the filing, of course.

I wanted to highlight something odd I stumbled across going through old documents, something I never noticed before, that relates to one of SCO's allegations. In SCO's appeal, you find this statement:

Within two hours of Novell's public claim that it owns the UNIX copyrights, SCO's stock plummeted, even though SCO had announced record revenues that day.

I'm not sure that is accurate. According to what I've found, as I'll show you, Novell put out a press release early in the morning, apparently even before the market opened, and yet IDG reported that same day that the stock at mid-morning was trading *up* by 3.33%.

By the end of the day, the stock was down, for sure, but what made it happen? We can only guess. SCO also put out a prepared statement in the morning, almost immediately after Novell's, and then at 11 AM, SCO held a conference call. If the stock went down by the end of the day, who is to say that it wasn't the conference call that caused it? Or SCO's prepared statement, for that matter? Or some combination of all of them? What is SCO's basis for its claim that it was Novell's statement that caused the stock to "plummet"? At any rate, piecing together all the evidence I have collected, I am unable to confirm that the stock plummeted within two hours of Novell's statement, and I see indications that it didn't happen that way. I will show you what I found so you can draw your own conclusions.


Glyn Moody doesn't buy this copyright sob story of SCO because it's all done and over.

Since then, SCO has seen its revenue fall, and blames the losses on competition from Linux. It sued Novell after Novell claimed it and SCO owned the Unix copyrights.

But in August of 2008, Kimball granted Novell's request for summary judgment. After a trial, he also awarded Novell about $2.5 million, plus interest in licensing revenue.

What's interesting is that unlike six years ago, nobody thinks that SCO stands a chance; even more tellingly, nobody is even *interested* any more. SCO is fighting a zombie case: it's dead but somehow still moving.

One service that SCO has done to the open source world is demonstrate finally and irrevocably that there is no copyright infringement in Linux – because if there had been, SCO would certainly have found it by now.


Groklaw has a few more articles about SCO and it seems to have returned to a full-time posting pace (with the RSS feeds finally restored after months of being frozen).

Ultimately, SCO seems to be running away with that devilish tail between its legs. "What a surprise," writes PJ, "SCO has withdrawn its Motion for an Order Establishing Sale and Bid Procedures, Approving Form of Asset Purchase Agreement, etc." Still all about deception, eh?

SCO is very much over in many respects. Let us focus on future risks such as Novell, which Microsoft is fueling in exchange for uninvited trouble like Mono.

"[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop,' or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment.... Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO."

--Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO



Licence plate from Utah

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

The European Patent Office Cannot Attract Proficient Patent Examiners Who Master Their Domain
They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
[Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
Brett Wilson LLP in space
 
Debian Can Dump Blind Users Because I am Not Blind
the sort of mentality we're up against
Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
Morale at Microsoft is really bad
Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
Not bad for this "Fosschild"
Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
Links for the day
How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
Will the cutoff date be extended again?
Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
Links for the day
Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
There are apparently no laws against that
Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
Social Control Media Productivity
Snapping photos of the bone
The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
"As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
Links for the day
Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
Microsoft is in a freefall
Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025
Gemini Links 17/07/2025: "Goodreads for Gemini" and Defence of "The Small Web"
Links for the day
Links 17/07/2025: Anger and Morale Issues at Microsoft, Wars and Conflicts Get Digital
Links for the day
CALEA / CALEA2 is the Real Problem, Not Chinese Operatives Exploiting CALEA / CALEA2 (as Any Other Nation Can)
CALEA / CALEA2 is more of a front door than a back door
99.99% Uptime in First Half of 2025
Since January there was only one noticeable outage
Nils Torvalds and Anna "Mikke" Torvalds (née Törnqvis) Hopefully Use GNU/Linux by Now
"Torvalds Family Uses Windows, Not Linus’ Linux"
Attack of the Slopfarms
FUD-amplifying bots with slop images, slop text (LLM slop)
When People Call a Best/Close Friend of Bill Gates a "Serial Rapist"
Good thing that the Linux Foundation keeps the "Linux" trademark ("Linux Mark") clean
Not My Problem, I Don't Care
Context/inspiration: Martin Niemöller
Honest Journalism About the European Patent Office Ceased to Exist After SLAPPs and Bribes to the Media
The EPO is basically a Mafia
Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia, Shutdown in Pakistan, What Next?
It seems possible that in 2025 alone Microsoft will have laid off over 50,000 workers
Life Became Simpler When I Stopped Driving and I Don't Miss Driving When I See "Modern" Cars
Gee, wonder why car sales have plummeted...
Why I Believe Brett Wilson LLP and Its Microsoft Clients Are All Toast
So far our legal strategy has worked perfectly
EPO Jobs Are Very Toxic and Bad for One's Health
Health first, not monopolies
Response to Ryo Suwito Regarding the Four Freedoms
the point of life isn't to make more money
Microsoft's Morale Circling Down the Drain
Or gutter, toilet etc.
What Matters More Than "Market Share"
The goal is freedom, not "market share"
Tech Used to be Fun. To Many of Us It's Still Fun.
You can just watch it from afar and make fun of it all
Links 17/07/2025: "Blog Identity Crisis" and Openwashing by Nvidia
Links for the day
Greffiers and the US Attorney of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
The lawsuit can help expose extensive corruption in the American court system as well
Credit Suisse collapse obfuscated Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners scandal
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The People Who Promoted systemd in Debian Also Promote Wayland
This is not politics
UK Media Under Threat: Cannot Report on Data Breach, Cannot Report on Microsoft Staff Strangling Women
The story of super injunction (in the British media this week, years late)
Victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, Wanted to Sue Him But Lacked the Funds (He Attacked Their Finances)
Having spoken to victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
Links 17/07/2025: Science, Hardware, and Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/07/2025: Staying in the "Small Web" and Back on ICQ
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 16, 2025