Judge Calls SCO On Lack of Evidence

Rob writes to mention a CBR article on Judge Wells' assessment that SCO just hasn't made its case against IBM in the well-known and long-lasting legal battle. The magistrate called the lack of evidence inexcusable. She further likened their claims to a shoplifter being handed a catalog for a store after being stopped, and being told 'what you took is in there somewhere, figure it out.' From the article: "In the view of the court it is almost like SCO sought to hide its case until the ninth inning in hopes of gaining an unfair advantage despite being repeatedly told to put 'all the evidence... on the table' ... given SCO's own public statements... it would appear that SCO had more than enough evidence to comply with the court's orders." Groklaw has coverage of the decision, and the complete text from the judge. Update: 06/30 15:14 GMT by Z : This story bears more than a passing resemblance to this one from Wednesday. Sorry about that.

How did SCO get to sue IBM in the first place?

[DRM_is_Stupid]

I thought that US law requires the defendant to provide reasonable amount of evidence in order to get a court case started in the first place.

The judge's analogy isn't quite right...

[brother_b]

She further likened their claims to a shoplifter being handed a catalog for a store after being stopped, and being told 'what you took is in there somewhere, figure it out.'

No, it's more like a store manager stopping someone who owns a competing business leaving the store, accusing them of shoplifting with no proof of anything being stolen, and then giving them the catalog to sort it out simply to harass them and take up their time.

Very Very Small Comfort

[Mateo_LeFou]

Seeing SCO capsize, dozens (hundreds?) of competent if obsolete UNIX hackers thrown out of work, with yummy parachutes for all the top-level blokes who dreamed up the Awesome strategy of trying to sue Linux out of existence, or at least make it look like a platform with hairy legal issues attaching to it. I hyperbolize only a little bit when I say this is almost an Enron-type scam.

Not at the evidence part yet.

[Mateo_LeFou]

Merits are not under consideration yet. This ruling is strictly on the fact that SCO did not specify what exactly they are claiming IBM did wrong. IBM has spent three years saying "What did we steal/contribute unlawfully? What code? What 'methods and concepts'?" It'll be later this year that they say "No, we didn't do that stuff."

And I agree it's sad that a co. can game the system this much for this long, without providing detail about the alleged wrongdoing. It's basically a Gitmo approach to suing.

Re:Well, that's not entirely true.

[Billosaur]

SCO _have_ made their case. Specifically, they've effectively gone "our case is extremely weak and you should throw it out."

Except I don't think it was quite that simple. While their case is extremely weak, they believed it was very strong. They've spent years now firing off one motion after another, trying to obfuscate, decalrify,and otherwise muddy a perfectly straightforward situation -- that they have no leg to stand on. They got some companies to settle with them, if nothing else to avoid the hassle of being dragged into this farce. While their attack may be driving investiment, it was not their primary goal, but now the case has been revealed for what it is: a tottering house of cards.

penalties? fines? anything?

[Tom]

So if even the court believes that SCO has abused the legal system for unfair gains - will there be any punishment for that? Can the judge declare such punishment or does it have to go through a seperate case? Does the court system even have a way to send the message that it doesn't like being abused?

Re:So FINALLY we'll see an end to it?

[yo_tuco]

"maybe buy one of their logoed signs and mount it on a trophy plaque. (well, a man can dream, can't he?)"

Better yet, How about we get in line and call in McBrige's offer to take our best shot! You do remember is famous words: [crn.com]

"We're either right or we're not. If we're wrong, we deserve people throwing rocks at us."

Okay big-mouth Darl McBride. I'm ready! I'm waiting! It's time!

Summation of the PDF

[a_karbon_devel_005]

In quick summary, SCO did not provide line number, VERSION and FILE information for many of it's claims. Some of their claims they did not even find source code for (roughly 2/3rds of claims). IBM warned them very early on that if they didn't receive these specifics, they would seek court intervention.

SCO also claimed that "methods and concepts" do not need source code to back them up. However, the Judge decided that this was incorrect and that methods and concepts could, in the most basic of terms, be boiled down to source code. Even the SCO technical witnesses attested to this, and furthermore SCO repeatedly requested the SAME LEVEL of specificity from IBM when requestiong source codef regarding AIX, LINUX and other products throughout the trial.

Basically the Judge finds it unacceptable that even though SCO has had since 2003 to substantiate it's claim with LINE, FILE and VERSION numbers for each claim, it has failed to do so.

Re:penalties? fines? anything?

[iggymanz]

IBM and Novell have already filed countersuits, and those are for amounts that will more than destory anything that's left of SCO. Then there will be fun of all the shareholders realizing that Darl and other executives lied about what SCO owned. This will go on for years and get very ugly, I can't wait 8D

Re:This is still going on?

[LoyalOpposition]

Normally you'd be right. However, I still think the parent has a point. Several things SCO has done make it appear that the whole purpose of the lawsuit was to slow the uptake of Linux. In other words, a trial in the court of public opinion. It's a though there's someone pulling SCO's strings. Someone with deep pockets; someone who would greatly benefit by Linux's demise. However, I can't imagine who that might be.

-Loyal

Re:Summation of the PDF

[mabhatter654]

Back to the shoplifting analogy... The judge has made IBM "strip search" for the court and SCO is still saying they took "something precious" without actually pointing to something that came from IBM's "pockets". Remember, SCO's had 2 years with IBM's source code opened to their lawyers to find something that IBM "stole". By this point the judge is expecting SCO to have "pages" in hand that they accuse IBM of stealing... they still REFUSE to pick something out that the judge can rule on.

Re:So when will SCO get sued?

[LoyalOpposition]

So when will SCO get sued for what it's done?

That's already happened.IBM counter-sued them to get them to say that IBM doesn't infringe. Red Hat sued to get them to say that Red Hat's customers don't have to pay SCO's licensing fees. And Novell sued them for 95% of their revenue. Amongst other things.

It lied. It got some fools to pay for their Linux licenses, which might be fraudulent.

It tried. SCO refused to sell the licenses once people stepped forward to buy one. Well, except for Microsoft and Sun, but SCO won't show the contracts that went with those sales.

SCO needs to be buried for all this sometime soon.

It'll happen. The Novell lawsuit is going to gut SCO. The IBM countersuit is going to render the fat into soap. And then the Red Hat lawsuit is going to clean up the blood stains.

-Loyal

Re:This is still going on?

[Billly Gates]

On the contrary one of the companies I used to work for is analizing the benefits and potential liabilities of using Linux. In the meantime its Windows everywhere and a hold on Linux.

Yes, this has damaged Linux in the office and Microsoft is gleaming as they charge us throught he roof.

FYI, the cost of the audit in the accounting spreadsheets is added to teh TCO of using Linux which makes MS look cheaper. After all we will have lower legal bills if we use Windows right?

Sigh

I want to deck these guys.

Fear of lawsuits

[sk999]

In spite of UNIX being a commercial product, one of its little known "features" for those having a source code license is that AT&T (and thus now SCO) offer NO indemnification whatsoever for any violations of copyright or patent law by the source code - the end users assumes all risk.

Which is kind of ironic, given that Darl McBride accused Linux exactly the same thing