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."
About time.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This has been going on for far too long now and it's been clear to everyone for years now that even the broken patent/copyright system won't side with SCO.
They've got nothing and SCO are a joke. Noone even takes this case seriously anymore.
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:5, Insightful)
And the moral of the story is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:About time.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:4, Insightful)
Lose the case in back-door deal whereby I would end up paying SCO almost nothing, but provide them with a precedent that would allow them to round up all of my competitors and remove them from my competitive landscape.
Why, what would you do?
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How far can IBM go? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:3, Insightful)
The perfect storm (Score:3, Insightful)
Judge K. grants Novell a writ of replevin. That means that the funds that SCO should have turned over to Novell when it sold licenses to Microsoft and Sun go into a trust account. SCO only has ten million in the bank so it is instantly bankrupt.
All the issues in all the trials are then amicably settled by the bankruptcy trustee.
Holy smoking crater Batman, this puppy is never going anywhere near a jury.
Well maybe some stuff will go before a jury. Darl may pay dearly for flapping his gums so loudly. There are the Lanham act issues. The SEC may also step in. Many people have said that the whole scheme involved a pump and dump on the stock market. There is certainly the odor of some kind of manipulation. In fact it has become a standing joke on the Yahoo SCOX message board (and now on InvestorsVillage as well). They call it the PaintBlaster with reference to the fact that the shares seem to get predictably 'painted up'.
Re:How far can IBM go? (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, maybe there's something in the law that would let you make a case against them if you could prove that they intentionally funded the company for the specific purpose of attacking IBM, since otherwise, you could have ridiculous things like bin Laden setting up companies with the specific purpose of killing Americans and getting away with it; but proving such a thing would be hard, especially in the post-Enron age of "Oops, did I just shred that?"
Who profited from the 2004 spike? (Score:5, Insightful)
The legal soap opera is interesting, but the real question is whether anyone profited from that stock bulge... and if so who and how much... and whether anyone intends to go after them for securities fraud. If not, then the whole charade may have been immensely worthwhile for SCO's insiders. IBM wins a pyrrhic victory, SCO goes bankrupt, thanks to the concept of a corporation the officers have no personal liability, and if they owned SCO stock and managed to sell it in 2004 they could well be laughing all the way to the bank.
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "enlightened self interest"; the right thing is also the best thing for yourself, no matter how many others it may also help. Any advantage gained in paying off SCO now would likely be lost in the future, especially as it's extremely unlikely that SCO would be paid off so cheaply.
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM's confident that this case will help them in the long run, or they wouldn't be involved in the litigation at all.
There was a bunch of speculation before the pretrial hearings even started that IBM might buy SCO, liquidate the corporation, and open-source all the software assets, and be done with the whole mess. Winning in court proves things about the GPL, the open development of software, the honesty of IBM as a corporation, and a few other things that a buyout or a settlement never could.
Re:Don't get too excited. (Score:2, Insightful)
PR you couldn't buy (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps not enough to make IBM to actually want these difficulties, but they're smart enough to recognize and exploit the benefits.
um, remember "Opportunity Cost" (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but I'm getting tired of this argument. Let's remember basic economics.
If you are IBM and you have, say, X lawyers as full-time staff and they cost you $Z a year, presumably they are not just sitting around playing checkers waiting for the next lawsuit; presumably you hired them full time because you have full time work for them to do -- work worth $Z to you. So you can't just divert these folks' energies to this SCO wankathon without giving up all the work they were going to do for you ordinarily. It's called 'opportunity cost' -- it essentially costs you $Z one way or another. So if you really do need that other work done, you'll have to hire other lawyers, probably for about $Z. Or you could leave your usual team on their usual tasks and hire other lawyers to sue SCO, and you'll probably spend about $Z on them if they are a lot like your first crew. One way or the other it is costing IBM. You know the saying, "There's no free lunch."
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone knew not to mess with IBM in the first place, the same as they know not to mess with Sun, Microsoft, HP, or anyone else with a patent portfolio and a serious legal budget.
IBM continues to invest in the case not because it's cost effective, not because it's the "right" thing to do, but to ensure that the question of derivative APIs (not code) is settled in the courts once and for all. There have been cases in the past over smaller related issues, such as the macro names and syntax between Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel, or IBM's implementation of a Win32 API layer for OS/2 Warp.
But this is the first case where there are clearly defined and documented international, national, and government standards that define the APIs being fought over. Were SCO allowed to walk away with even the slightest victory, there would be a chance of software providers getting sued over any attempt to implement standardized APIs, regardless of whether the implementation is "obvious" to an experienced programmer or not.
Re:Legal Extortion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:IIRC, Boies argued against Microsoft .... (Score:4, Insightful)
"So he has a great track record. *rolleyes*"
Actually, the Gov't won and MS found guilty. But then the administration changed, and John Ashcroft's DOJ was tasked with finding a way to let MS off the hook.
Re:Summary Judgement (Score:3, Insightful)
The Korean War, part 2 (Score:3, Insightful)
I hear you, I just don't think that would happen. MS would rather blow that money on lawyers or burn it in huge steaming piles in the middle of Redmond rather than let anyone else get their hands on it.
In a way, you know what this whole SCO/IBM thing reminds me of? The Korean War. No, really - stick with me on this.
You have two huge superpowers who disliked each other immensely at the time, China and the US. But rather than fight each other directly, they decided to hash it out through puppet governments and a limited engagement in Korea. The north got backing and some support from China. The south got the same from the US. Nobody really committed anything earth-shaking to the conflict - too costly to go in full-tilt.
Reminds me of the whole SCO thing immensely. SCO doesn't have enough backing to do their bit, so MS funds them through Baystar. And they go after Linux. And Linux suddenly gets enough backing to defend itself through IBM. Notice how IBM and MS don't fight each other directly? It all takes place in their own private Korea, SCO.
The analogy isn't perfect, but it's close enough I think.
Re:The meter continues to run .... (Score:3, Insightful)