SCO's claims Against Daimler-Chrysler Thrown Out

Zak3056 writes "According to eyewittness reports published on Groklaw, SCO has been all but thrown out of court in their suit against Daimler-Chrysler. In a hearing that lasted 18 minutes with the judge ruling from the bench, all of SCO's claims, save that DCC failed to file their required certification with 30 days, were dismissed."

And the cards begin to come crashing down...

[Vengeance]

I was waiting for this to start. Meritless lawsuits have taken the SCOmbags way further than they ever should have gotten.

ahahahahahahaha...

[joeldg]

serves them right.

glad to see "justice" is being done.

would like to see them thrown out of the entire country myself (not just court)..

Good precendent to set though..

Money?

[Klar]

Have the SCO made any money from all the legal actions they have taken? How do they still have the money to do all this?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Misleading?

[stratjakt]

Probably neither, I wouldn't come to slashdot looking for facts.

SCO had a tripod of cases...

[SirFozzie]

IBM, Autozone, and Daimler-Chrysler. SCO's future was shaky, but they claimed with victory in the three cases mentioned, they would be rock solid.

And lo, the FUD'ed tripod stood firm against the gales of disbelieving laughter, and failed FUD attacks.

First, AutoZone gets an indefinite stay. (uh oh.. SCO's only got two legs left, it's wobbly, a gust of wind will blow it over)..

And now the judge rips out every avenue of attack in the Daimler-Chrysler case. The judge also made it pretty much impossible for SCO to extort^W license their technology to all their old customers who now use Linux..

There's an image for you. SCO's tripod only has one leg left. There's a technical term for that.

BROKEN.

SCO provides Much wanted recreation ...

[flyingace]

SCO provides much wanted recreation ...to my busy days. These guys are down right funny, when it comes to how they are running their business.

Re:One question...

[taniwha]

a good reason for a counter suit or two ... you can't buy a company out of bankruptcy without the creditor's OK .... in this case that might be IBM/Redhat ....

The trap has been set

[craw]

The judge set up a trap for poor old SCO by not ruling on the issue of not complying within 30 days. By dismissing all the other charges, she essentially cut off any meaningful avenues in discovery that SCO would have likely pursued. This is not going to be a fishing expedition for SCO.

OTOH, the 30 day compliance issue actually keeps open several key discovery paths that DCC might want to take. For instance, why wasn't DCC contacted after the letter was sent and before the lawsuit was filed? DCC could easy state who the hell is SCO? What happended to AT&T/USL? When did SCO get the rights? Hey, okay, we knew about that Novell deal, but SCO?

Additionally, why wasn't DCC contacted prior to the lawsuit when a simple phone call would be have cleared things up (I know that SCO addresses this issue in their complaint)? The judge could point out that SCO is wasting court resources by filing lawsuits without making any attempt to resolve the dispute outside of the courts, which in itself sends a message about launching surprise lawsuits.

Re:One down

[Anonymous Coward]

"While I would love to rejoice as much as the next Slashdotter, isn't anyone worried about appeals?"

How should SCO2 appeal this case? There is one item left to be litigated, and if that is done and ruled about, then SCO2 can appeal.

After losing a case because DCC did not react within 30 days to a letter sent to a company that changed its name 15 years ago in a building that was teared down for a highway years ago for a software that was not used 7 years ago? And the 30 days included yuletide, which was used by SCO2 as a reason they could not contact their executives?

Re:It is unfortunate

[Halo1]

This is not about patents, it's about copyright. And the fact that you give something away for free, does not mean you should be allowed to infringe on copyright (otherwise e.g. Microsoft would be allowed to infringe on the GPL by incorporating GPL'd code in a closed source Internet Explorer, back when they were giving it away for free).

Re:It is unfortunate

[harlingtoxad]

Additionally, I think that if someone wants to give away something for free (like linux distributions) then they shouldn't have to worry about patents and such. Only if they are selling the product for profit should they be liable for lawsuit Just because you don't profit from something doesn't mean you are exempt from patent laws. (I am NOT saying Linux is doing this!) You can't stay out of jail because you gave cocaine away but didn't sell it...

Re:One down

[Xentax]

Well, he did say their *2nd* biggest mistake...

I'd say fucking with IBM, the annual #1 patent receiver (among other legally-interesting habits) probably knows a thing or two about getting and using great lawyers as well :)

Taking on Linux via legal tomfoolery is a mistake, but not the biggest one (lots of companies shirk their GPL responsibilities but most come to see reason, for example).

Fucking with the deepest-pocketed, and one of the most veteran, companies in the computer industry, was (IMHO) their biggest mistake.

Maybe they'll sue Ford next, claiming they invented the production line automobile...

Xentax

distro marketing opportunity

[ch-chuck]

RH or Novell could step up to the plate with a transition plan for SCO shops about to be orphaned - something like "Are you tired of your software vendor spending more time in court than addressing your issues? It's time to switch. Call for our free migration plan."

Most important sentence in the description

[Intraloper]

of the hearing: "All other claims were dismissed and she acknowledged that the contract doesn't require certifications that are outside the language of the contract." Assuming that is an accurate acountof Judge Chabot's ruling, it utterly eviscerates everything SCO hoped for from every single one of those letters they sent. Section 2.05, by this ruling, ONLY requires a lsit of CPUs on which SCO softwares is running, and nothing more. SCO can not use that clause to go fishing for Linux or other activities. This of course is not binding in other courts, but you can bet it will be a centerpiece in the arguments in any other court where SCO might try this scam again.

SCO winning in mainstream press

[0x0d0a]

The annoying thing is how mainstream press translates this into - "Linux allegedly violating Unix copyrights" sensationalistic reporting. I bet they are generating more hits that way. What you would hope for is that press gets its facts straight and cut down on "OMG -- you HAVE TO read this!!!" type articles.

As I pointed out yesterday in another SCO discussion:

The mainstream press is buying into SCO's claims just (AFAICT) based on the weight of how often they repeat them and the fact that they have an easy contact point, whereas there is no general "Linux" contact person.

Take a look at one of CNN.com's front page articles [cnn.com] from yesterday. They sport lovely quotes like the following:

"The communal aspects of open source can lead to thorny legal questions, particularly when a company claims its proprietary code has seeped into a project. Because developers typically don't offer warranties, end users could be held liable for infringements."

Wow. It's like saying that all code under the GPL is held to a legal standard that's as harsh as ... well, to give an equivalent example, if an author of a book included some infringing content, it's like holding every person that read the book liable. Eben Moglen's shot this down, it's been raked through the coals on Slashdot and Groklaw ... but because SCO does a better job of managing the press than the "Linux community, as a whole", nasty disinformation about open source is rapidly spreading around the world and seeping into end users' heads.

Sad. And probably not fixable.

Re:One down

[nelsonal]

IBM beat the US government in an anti-trust trial. The US government who has a virtually unlimited budget for lawyers and investigators. Why a 20 man operation decided to try to sue them and hoped to be successful, I'll never know.

am not a action investor...

[aepervius]

...So pardon me if I do not udnerstand why after a big volume trade the price drop (ok) but after a smaller volume about 2 hours later the price go exactly back where it was. Check for yourself it is back at 4.6, even highier that it was the previous day.

Re:distro marketing opportunity

[B3ryllium]

Migration plans are seldom free, even if the operating system is.

Re:SCO winning in mainstream press

[michael_cain]

The mainstream press is buying into SCO's claims just (AFAICT) based on the weight of how often they repeat them and the fact that they have an easy contact point, whereas there is no general "Linux" contact person.

Not to mention the fact that the other parties in the various lawsuits, being grownups, don't make comments about ongoing court cases. After spending almost 25 years inside giant corporations, I did learn that the two rules are (1) no one but the lawyers is allowed to talk about the case and (2) the lawyers don't say anything.

Re:OUCH! Stock price plunges....

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably just the short squeeze. Lots of people shorted SCOX and will need to be buying shares at low prices.

Michael

Re:Pronunciation Guide

[Anonymous Coward]

And, actually, the Daimler part is pronounced "DIME-ler" in Germany.

Re:OUCH! Stock price plunges....

[LMCBoy]

You still see it in the way the suits are being reported by "the mainstream press", who tend to take the side of the biggest corporation, by default.

Uh....SCO vs IBM, SCO vs Daimler/Chrysler, SCO vs Novell. If the mainstream press always sides with the bigger company, then their slant should be decidedly *against* SCO in each of these cases.
Hell, even Auto Zone has almost 100 times SCO's market cap.