Ding, dong SCO is dead
Though SCO still has the option to appeal, a federal district court judge Dale Kimball has now effectively written its death sentence in the form of a somewhat blistering final judgment (PDF), as Groklaw reports.
SCO, once the bane of the open-source world, is effectively dead. The company, which long ago stopped trying to make useful products and instead morphed into a boutique law firm, has seen its revenue slide into oblivion while Novell, which stood up to SCO and has now won in court, has seen its Linux revenue jump.
Lesson? You can only milk a weak intellectual property claim for so long. Ars Technica gives the details of the final judgment against SCO:
Judge Kimball determined that SCO was subject to a contract with Novell, which it violated by lifting SVRX confidentiality provisions in a licensing agreement with Sun. This move exceeded the authority granted to SCO under the terms of a 1994 asset purchase agreement that enabled SCO to sell limited SVRX licenses to third parties on behalf of Novell. Judge Kimball also determined that SCO breached its fiduciary duty by neglecting to remit the requisite portion of the licensing revenue to Novell. In addition to the $2,547,817 that SCO was originally ordered to pay to Novell in a previous judgment, SCO will also have to pay $918,122 in prejudgment interest and $489 per day from August 29 until November 20.
It's possible that someone will invest more money in SCO to take a gamble on the lawsuit turning in SCO's favor on appeal, but this is doubtful. SCO's claims have been demonstrated in court to be false, leaving any would-be litigant with no real possibility of winning.
The largely unsung hero in all this? Novell. Novell has stuck with the litigation for five years. Thank you, Novell. I may disagree with the company on other issues, but on SCO and other patent trolls we can agree.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
First, the language of the judgment is not "blistering," or if it is, the language was agreed to by both parties. They wrote it, not the court. The only dispute between them was a minor point concerning whether the 2003 agreement between SCO and Sun was authorized. That dispute was decided in favor of Novell.
Second, if you actually read the judgment , it doesn't order SCO to pay Novell anything. It finds that SCO converted a certain amount of Novell's funds and incurred pre-judgment interest, but there is no order for restitution or any other remedy. The remedy is under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court, which hasn't yet acted. In fact, SCO and Novell have agreed on the amount that SCO actually owes in restitution, and it's much less than the amount of the conversion.
Finally, SCO is not a "patent troll." It has never sued anyone for patent infringement, nor has it threatened to do so. Please at least get this basic fact right.
This is ALL about copyrights. Who owns the copyright to Unix, who owns the rights to the derivative code that was previously written for Unix, and subsequently contributed to Linux.
The 'minor point' meant that Novell - not SCO - has the right to sue IBM for copyright infringement, and if Novell chooses to do so, SCO must waive all rights. That's not so minor, if you understood that:
a. SCO sued IBM/Sequent for $3-5 billion;
b. That SCO believed that it owned derivative code that (previously Sequent had developed and used for their version of Unix) was provided for use in Linux;
c. SCO sued Autozone and Daimler-Chrysler for using Linux.
The judgment - which means that it finalized a MEMO from last year - denies SCO the ability to sue. Novell holds the copyright, and is the ONLY party that can defend its copyrights, if it so chooses to do so.
He knew this lawsuit had no merit before they began.
It couldn't happen to a more deserving company. Maybe next time, MS will be more careful in who it funds to try and bring down Linux.
- by gggg sssss November 24, 2008 3:12 PM PST
- about f'n time. May they all rot in hell
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(11 Comments)