IP Attorney - Why SCO Has No Case

OSS_ilation writes "In an interview over at SearchOpenSource.com, IP attorney Thomas Carey shoots down SCO's cases against IBM and Novell, but predicts that SCO will fight a losing battle to its last. IT directors shouldn't worry about SCO Group's latest sallies in its legal war on Linux vendors IBM Corp. and Novell Inc., Clarey says, and explains why SCO has no case, predicts the open source legal fields of battle for 2006 and discusses SCO's claims against Novell. Carey chairs the Business Practice Group of Bromberg & Sunstein LLP, an intellectual property law practice in Boston, Mass." Groklaw, as always, has additional details and commentary on this.

Making it appeal-proof...

[rkhalloran]

The judge has already commented on SCOX's astonishing lack of evidence; he's giving them lots of rope to hang themselves on, so when he hands them their collective ass, they don't have any grounds to come back and claim they didn't get a fair chance to make their [non-existant] case. And the positive PR accruing to Big Blue for defending Linux far outweighs the cost of the legal team, especially when sites like Groklaw [groklaw.net] are doing half the analysis work for them gratis.

SCO doesnt know is defeated: Movie Quote.

[bubulubugoth]

When reading about SCO, CEO that just doesnt give up... I remeber this quotes from Gladiator:

Quintus: People should know when they're conquered.

Maximus: Would you, Quintus? Would I?

Re:That's really not likely

[whoever57]

They have to be able to convince the lawyers that they will be paid.

At the moment SCO is paying. However, soon, SCO will not have to pay their lawyers any more, although the lawyers will be committed to finishing the cases (and appeals, if any). The question is: when the lawyers are no longer receiving additional cash for their services, how good will their services be?

But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Thomas Carey shoots down SCO's cases against IBM and Novell, but predicts that SCO will fight a losing battle to its last.

Everyone knows their case is groundless. It was a poorly disguised attempt by Microsoft to discredit Linux. And as long as Microsoft is willing to funnel money into their coffers SCO will continue in this groundless legal action. This is not about law or legal proceedings, this is about one large corporation's attempts to use the legal system to kill a competitor.

Kinda puts the lie to this recent slashdot article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/08/172722 5&tid=109&tid=166 [slashdot.org]

Why haven't the courts thrown this out yet? All it does is lessen credibility of the US legal system and encourage lawlessness in the American corporate sector (who, God knows, needs absolutely no more encouragement in that area).

Anti-gravity

[rumblin'rabbit]

SCOX, the SCO Group stock, has been hanging around $4 for quite some time now. Their (legitimate) Unix business is optimistically worth $.50 per share, and pessimistically worth nothing. Thus the stockmarket puts a value on their IP claims of over $3.50/share, or around $60 million dollars.

Now I've invested in stocks for two decades, and I say no vaguely rational investor would touch this stock. It is speculative beyond belief.

So what keeps this stock up? And why has the stock price been so steady over the last few months? Such a wild speculation should fluctuate madly.

Queue the conspiracy theories.

Refunds?

[RickPartin]

What about the people who were tricked into or were forced by an employer into buying a license? Has SCO said whether they will refund the money?

A change in direction.

[Jaywalk]

Has SCO actually shown that its UnixWare System V code exists in SuSE Linux or another distribution?

Carey: SCO has not shown that its code exists in Linux. SCO now seems to be grounding its case on 'unauthorized disclosures', which is a very different kettle of fish than copied code.

This seemed to me to be the only really interesting bit in the piece. IBM has asked (and is expected to ask again) for the judge to enter a "summary judgement" that Big Blue's Linux activities do not infringe SCO's copyrights. If that happens, any copyright issues will be dropped from any jury trial. By avoiding the copyright issue, SCO appears to be looking for a way to still get to trial in spite of a summary judgement. But this also disrupts their claims against Linux.

While SCO likes the vague term "intellectual property" the law only recognizes three items in that class: copyrights, patents and trade secrets. SCO has never claimed patents or trade secrets, so that leaves copyright. If SCO can't establish copyright, they have no hold over anyone except those with whom they have a contract.

While the court cases with Novell and IBM may drag on for years, this -- as far as Linux is concerned -- is another step into irrelevancy for SCO.

Did ya notice...

[WheelDweller]

That after a big setback, SCOX goes to $2.00 a share, and when it's been at $4.00 a share for a week or two, we heare more about the case again? This is the 2nd or 3rd cycle of this.

Someone's losing a LOT of money here. Usually investors ebb and flow in increments; this is more like a switch. Who in their right mind would keep funding this shell of a company?