IBM Asks Court to Toss SCO's Entire Case 230
Lost+Found writes "After three and a half years of case proceedings, summary judgement motions have been submitted in the highly controversial SCO v. IBM case. SCOX shares took a loss of 18.75%, or $0.39, to close at $1.69. IBM shares rose 0.97%, a gain of $0.79, to close at $82.00. From the article: 'Both sides in SCO v. IBM have filed motions for summary judgment. To be precise, SCO has filed one for partial summary judgment and IBM has filed several motions for summary judgment, one for each of SCO's claims and two more for good measure on two of IBM's counterclaims. In other words, it is asking the court to throw out SCO's entire case, and to grant it judgment on two counterclaims without even going to trial on those two.' More motions for summary judgement from SCO against IBM counterclaims are currently being uncovered at Groklaw."
Don't get too excited. (Score:5, Informative)
Motions for summary judgement are just part of the process; both sides file 'em, even when it's ridiculous (as SCO's are), usually the judge ignores them both, and life moves on.
And the people said... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:5, Informative)
Their "fixed" bill has come unfixed several times so far.
Twice they've had to throw another $5 million into the kitty for "expenses, experts, etc."
Its in their regulatory filings, along with "the future of the company is uncertain should we not prevail".
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:3, Informative)
Ditto for SCO, and really for most companies in general. Even Microsoft hires outside attorneys for litigation; in fact, David Boies, who argued for Microsoft in the DOJ antitrust case is the lawyer who's spearheading SCO's case.
Re:How far can IBM go? (Score:4, Informative)
This is called Piercing the corporate veil [wikipedia.org]. It is not easy, but not impossible either. If IBM was able to show that the major shareholders were using SCO as a sacrificial pawn to go after IBM, but prevent IBM from being able to collect damages, then IBM might be able to go after those shareholders directly.
I don't think MSFT is a SCOX shareholder. I think MSFT "funded" SCOX by making some lame licensing deals. I wonder how creative IBM's lawyers are willing to be.
Re:Highly controversial? (Score:3, Informative)
Controversial? I thought everyone agreed that SCO didn't have a case.
Exactly. I believe the only controversy has been whether this lawsuit should exist in the first place.
Re:Don't get too excited. (Score:5, Informative)
But, IBM has already filed for summary judgement once and, at that time, Hon. Dale Kimball hinted that IBM might consider filing such a motion later in the discovery phase. So that's what IBM's legal team is doing here... what they've already been asked to do. Chances are, Kimball is going to grant the summary judgement on this one.
(IANAL)
Let me link to an old Slashdot comment... (Score:3, Informative)
Couldn't explain it any better.
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:5, Informative)
The brand name UNIX is owned by The Open Group (Score:3, Informative)
Re:IIRC, Boies argued against Microsoft .... (Score:3, Informative)
Value of SCO (Score:3, Informative)
58 percent of the company is held by major owners and mutual funds.
Ownership:
DERBY, STEVEN About 10%
LAMAR, STEVEN M About 10%
BAYSTAR CAPITAL II LP about 8%
Glenhill Advisors LLC 10.19%
The firm is worth between 20 and 40 Million USD and has 14 million in cash
but they go through 9 Million a Year.
- mph
The saddest of truths (Score:2, Informative)
The rest of us are either in it for the money, or under the illusion that they are not.
Re:Theory slain by facts, film at eleven. (Score:3, Informative)
Basically when you sell short, you are borrowing some shares from someone else, selling them right away, and promising to pay them back later on.
If your broker can't find someone with a long position to "borrow" the shares from, they can't let you sell short.
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:5, Informative)
In this case also, as much effort as IBM has placed behind Linux, they need to have it seen as free of any legal issues to be able to market it effectively. I suppose SCOX was assuming IBM would rather give them a quick payoff to 'go away' then slug it out in court.
Re: Proof is not important. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:3, Informative)