SCO Files To Amend Claims To IBM Case, Again

UnknowingFool writes "SCO filed a motion to allow it to change its claims against IBM. Again. A brief recap: In December 2005, SCO was supposed to finally list all claims against IBM. This was the Final Disclosure. In May 2006, SCO filed its experts reports to the court which discussed subjects beyond those in the Final Disclosure. Naturally, IBM objected and wanted to remove certain allegations. Judge Wells ruled from the bench and granted IBM's motion: SCO's experts cannot discuss subjects that were not in the Final Disclosure. Now, SCO wants to amend the December 2005 Final Disclosure to include other allegations."

Re:Buyout SCO to rid us of problems

[databank]

That may be what Sco wants...to be so aggravating that you give them money....

Besides who would want to buy a sinking ship with a huge hole in the bottom?

Re:Buyout SCO to rid us of problems

[Vengeance]

No.

The SCO Group (NOT the Santa Cruz Operation, by the way, they're now called Tarantella) must be crushed into an unrecognizable mess of lies and hopelessness. There is no other way. Their attorneys should be disbarred, their officers should all spend a few decades in Federal prison, and anyone who bought stock in them because they saw the hope of a payout from this extortion scheme should rot in hell.

Lawyers Worth Their Weight in Dirty, Shoddy Paper

[Doc Ruby]

Maybe we're just seeing what kind of lawyers you get when all you can pay them with is stock in a company whose assets consist solely of a huge scam lawsuit against IBM.

One of the precedents that IBM should produce by seeing this travesty trial to its just conclusion is penalties for the SCO lawyers who have been wasting court time with this obviously frivolous lawsuit. Why should taxpayers subsidize those lawyers with free access to the courts for their stockmarket scam? The SEC should look at their brokers, too, to see whether they are in on the deal - almost certainly they are.

This case shouldn't end with only strong precedents clearing Linux developers and distributors from the FUD SCO has pumped into the market for years now. It should end with disbarred lawyers and delicensed brokers, and probably punitive damages (paid to the court, compensating taxpayers) exceeding the profit those professional crooks have made from the stock transactions their work has been the smoke and mirrors to produce.

IANAL

[mwvdlee]

I don't have detailed knowledge of the US legal system, but isn't SCO stretching it beyond it's limits in a way rarely seen before. And certainly with such high profile cases with companies of these sizes?

Re:Buyout SCO to rid us of problems

[ciw42]

I read a quote from Darl somewhere a good while ago saying that in all honesty, when they started their legal endeavours, they fully expected IBM to just buy them out. Guess IBM decided that it'd be more fun to bury them. Big time. And in the long-run of course, the case has actually done a good deal to strengthen the GNU/Linux community.

Even without a buyout, those involved in this nonsense have actually made a good deal of money - the lawyers, Darl and the other execs (who are on hefty salaries) who have done rather well from all this, thank you very much. The people I feel sorry for the actual engineers at SCO, as there can be no doubt the company won't come out the other end of this in any fit state to carry on. It used to be a damn good little company, providing a good product at sensible prices. Now look at them. They're just a bad joke.

Re:That's what they've wanted all along...

[AceCaseOR]

This has been one big nuisance suit by SCOX *HOPING* IBM would pay them off or buy them out to silence them. IBM's attitude has been "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute". They know paying SCOX off would prompt a flood of copycat suits from other busted vendors.

Or, to put it another way (and to quote Rudyard Kipling):

"That if once you have paid him the Danegeld,
You never get rid of the Dane."

This is all about delay

[MojoRilla]

Yet more delay from SCO.

SCO is essentially saying the following:
Your honor, since the trial date has been postponed to after Novell (September 2007), let us amend our "final" disclosure. IBM has lots of time to respond to this, so it causes no harm.

SCO obviously doesn't understand the word final. They also say (this is a quote):

There also is a public interest in disputes being resolved on their merits, which granting of the requested relief would advance.

The public interest is in having this matter resolved in a reasonable time frame. SCO had 3.8 years (from when they filed in March of 2003 until when final disclosure happened in December of 2006) to assemble their evidence. The longer this charade goes on, and that Linux is under SCO's cloud of FUD, the more damage SCO is doing.

SCO has tried to delay at every turn during this trial, so this comes as no surprise. It now seems obvious that this whole lawsuit was an attempt to delay Linux adoption by destroying Linux credibility in the marketplace. This whole thing was about delay.

This is damaging credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from Europe and have witnessed this case being mentioned every once in a while. It seems like some kind of virus; the thing which you cannot kill and it just pops up every once in a while.

What I fail to understand is that the American justice department is allowing all this to continue. To which I'd like to immediatly add that this whole ordeal is more damaging than people might realize. For me its also portraying the whole justice system as something which you really can't take too seriously. Jury courts? Sure, try to work on their emotion. Trials with no end because no evidence is being produced what so ever? Sure; only in America so it seems.

What makes me look upon this with a little disdain for this, arrogant if you will, IMO display of incompetence is the sheer fact that SCO has also tried this in Europe just once. The only thing they ended up with was a threat for some major fines (due to plain out slander) if they pulled a stunt like that again.

What is it with these people? If they need to apply the law and it allows for grand mockeries like this wouldn't it make sense to get something in motion to actually /change/ those laws or is this something people weren't hired to do or set in motion, resulting in nothing ever changing?

Guys, this isn't only hurting business. Its hurting your credibility too!

Re:setting up for appeal

[rkhalloran]

The consensus from those following this circus is that the reason the judges have let this run on as long as it has it exactly to scuttle attempts at appeal; they've given the SCOundrels every opportunity to come up with some credible evidence, IBM has produced their entire source repository for them to look for infringing code in, and still the judge's comment at the end of discovery was "is this all you've got?". At this point they're trying hard to get any sort of disputable points into the record to keep this thing going. When the IBM counterclaims kick in there's going to be a glowing greasespot in Lindon where once stood Caldera, er, SCOX.

SCOX DELENDA EST!!

Re:This is all about delay

[bstone]

They have already been able to delay until, magically, Vista got released. Now that Vista is having a bit of a problem with traction in the marketplace, perhaps it's time for some more "emergency" delay. Not that anyone is really concerned any more that there is anything wrong with Linux, but that seems to have been the original idea, and perhaps some of the principles still think they can generate some more FUD out of it.

Re:Resources -- At least IBM has big pants

[Gulik]

But at this point they just want to see SCO die in a fire and send out a message to any other SCO wannabe.

(With apologies to JMS and Vir Cotto)

"What do you want, IBM?"
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when the judge cuts off your head and sticks it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations of law school graduates that some cash grabs come with too high a price. I would look up at your penniless eyes and wave, like this." [waves, smiling]

Re:Buyout SCO to rid us of problems

[theonetruekeebler]

Why does somebody always say the attorneys should be disbarred? As far as I can tell they are working strenuously and entirely within the law to represent a client who has an extremely weak case.

There's no rule, nor should there be, that attorneys should be punished for representing jerks. Chances are, SCO engaged their services without telling them everything they needed to know, things like "we don't actually own Unix." Now the lawyers are stuck riding this out, because if they walk away, or even slack off, that could get them disbarred, censured, or on the wrong end of a malpractice suit.

These big-dog lawyers are no fools. Undoubtedly they have a pretty good idea of where their case is going. But if they don't go down swinging, they'll never get another client.

It's because SCO is the plaintiff

[Animats]

This suit is backwards. SCO brought this suit, yet they want to stall. Usually, the plaintiff wants to push the case forward, and the defense wants to stall. The system is set up so that the plaintiff pushes the case forward, which is why this is dragging on.

Bear in mind that SCO's stalling isn't a problem for IBM. Is IBM losing customers over this? No. Is it costing IBM significant amounts of money? No. (IBM total revenue for 1995: $91 billion. Gross profit: $37 billion). Can SCO afford to keep this up much longer? No. Is SCO likely to win in the end? No. Not a problem.

What's actually happening is that the summary judgment motions by IBM are about to be decided. SCO is desperately trying to distract attention from that, but that's where the real action is.