Novell Bombards SCO with Summary Judgment Motions 98
rm69990 writes "Novell has filed 4 motions for Summary Judgment against SCO, which essentially ask the court to toss the remainder of SCO's case that isn't already being arbitrated between SUSE and SCO. One seeks a ruling from the court that Novell transfered none of the copyrights in Unix to SCO, which is backed up by many exhibits and declarations from people who negotiated the deal. Another, along the same lines, asks the court to toss the portions of SCO's Unfair Competition and Breach of Contract claims pertaining to the Unix copyrights. The third asks the court to rule that Novell did not violate the Technology License Agreement between SCO and Novell, and last and also least, the fourth seeks to toss the Slander of Title for the additional reason that SCO has failed to prove any special damages. These motions follow 2 motions for summary judgment filed by Novell late last year on 2 of their counterclaims."
Obligatory Groklaw Links (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IANAL but I don't think this means much (Score:3, Informative)
Keep in mind that the real point of summary judgment motions at this stage of a case is to narrow down what issues need a trial and which can be decided by the judge as a matter of law. So while Novell can win these motions, in a sense it can't lose anything by them. The worst that happens is that it all goes forward to trial. The whole idea is that after discovery, you kind of know what should be excised from the case, and both sides normally file dispositive motions right after discovery, so that everyone knows what is still viable and still needs to go to trial, if anything.
Re:I remember (Score:4, Informative)
SCO claims different things depending on which day of the week it is. Sometimes they claim direct copying, sometimes they claim that IBM wasn't allowed to put their own code in Linux. Sometimes they claim "methods and concepts" means that everything that looks like Unix is theirs. Sometimes they claim up is down, and black is white.
Re:I remember (Score:5, Informative)
"public domain" did not create this problem.
The 100 year copyright created this problem (software is obsolete in how many years ?)
The 1980(?) ruling that allowed binary software to be copyrighted created this problem.
Imagine if copyright for software is 15-20 years, and to copyright binaries that do not come with source, the source must be placed in a government approved repository (which releases software when the copyright expires, or before with company approval or company end).
As for being sued, a simple disclaimer works.