SCO Receives Nasdaq's Delisting Notice

An anonymous reader writes "This somewhat amusing press release of sorts tells us one of those things we've all been waiting a while for. SCO(X) has announced that 'it received a Nasdaq Staff Determination letter on December 21, 2007 indicating that as a result of having filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel has determined to delist the company's securities from the Nasdaq Stock Market and will suspend trading of the securities effective at the open of business on Thursday, December 27, 2007.' PJ at Groklaw has surmised that with effectively zero cash resources left, Novell doesn't stand to get much more than SCO's furniture, if even that. Ding dong, is the wicked witch finally dead yet?"

Ding dong

[ozmanjusri]

Is the wicked witch finally dead yet?

No, the wicked witch is still spreading FUD [theregister.co.uk].

She's down one Winkie now though.

Re: Still spreading FUD.

[Baron_Yam]

I think you need a more recent reference that 2004 to prove your point...

Great quotes from SCO's CEO

[Ang31us]

Some of my favorite quotes [wikiquote.org] from Darl McBride: "And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++." "Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim." "We didn't start this, but we're going to finish it."

Re:So why does everyone hate SCO?

[greg1104]

SCO substantially slowed the use of Linux in corporations by suing IBM in 2003 and threating businesses with their own lawsuits if they used Linux. Their claims were on legally shaky ground and it was obvious to anyone who looked at the short "infringing" code samples that leaked out that their case was based on either gross incompetence or downright fraud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM [wikipedia.org] has a good summary of how that played out on the legal+technical side.

Re:So why does everyone hate SCO?

[orclevegam]

In addition to what greg1104 said it should be noted that SCO already had prior history with patent/copyright trolling. Based on their previous history it was fairly obvious that they hoped the lawsuit they brought against IBM would be settled quickly out of court rather than having to actually defend their ludicrous claims earning them a quick cash infusion for little actual work. When IBM failed to roll over and instead bit back they got caught trying to prove the un-provable, but continued to insist all along that they were right while tossing out every excuse they could come up with to buy time. They probably would have been dead in the water long ago, but it seems that Microsoft and various parties (strongly suspected to be Microsoft shills) bought ridiculous numbers of bogus "licenses" from SCO to help shore up SCOs bank account. Of course after many long years of SCO screaming their fool head off that they own Linux (among many other stupid claims) they've finally been beaten into the smear on the concrete that we all knew they were to begin with. This is merely the final act where they get the hose out and wash them into the gutter.

SCO's botched endgame

[Animats]

For those of you who don't follow this mess, SCO voluntarily went into bankruptcy in September, the day before the SCO vs. Novell trial was to start. This stopped that case. For about two months. Novell asked the bankruptcy judge to let their case continue. After frantic maneuvers from SCO, which went nowhere, the bankruptcy judge let the Novell case proceed. It will go to trial in January or February. The only remaining issue there is how much money SCO owes Novell. SCO already lost on the "who owns UNIX copyrights" issue; Novell owns them.

The IBM and Red Hat cases are still pending, so if anybody wants to buy up SCO (the company's entire market cap is only $2.4 million today), they'd be stuck with those potential liabilities, on top of the Novell liability. That's why nobody is snapping up the remains of the company.

Plan on visiting the liquidation auction some time next summer.

Re:Why the 6-day delay?

[Jim Hall]

It took until 12/27 to hit the newswires because the SCO press release is dated 12/27. [sco.com] The newswires picked it up the same day, today.

Re:If there was any proof....

[toxic666]

Webster on Groklaw (a lawyer) says yes. Not criminal, but personal civil liability against the directors. There is already a finding by Kimball in Utah that the MS and Sun license money was converted (legal term) and should have gone to Novell. That opened them up to civil suits from Novell.

Re:I'll liquidate it for them

[ArsonSmith]

Actually part of the problem was that people thought they did hit an iceberg but that the ship was still "unsinkable" Otherwise evacuation of the ship would have started earlier and more people would have survived.

The SEC should investigate

[stites]

Under the law important news about a stock has to be released in such a way that all investors know what is happening. There should not be some investors who know the important news when they are trading and other investors who do not know the news when they are trading. Publicly traded companies handle this by either making the announcement after the close of trading for the day or by asking for a trading halt while the news disseminates. So SCO was correct to make the announcement after the close.

Where SCO acted incorrectly was in waiting 5 days to announce the news. This set up the opportunity for the people who knew that SCO was going to be delisted to trade on insider information. The SEC should investigate trading in SCOX shares between December 21 and December 26 to see if any insider trading in SCOX occurred.

-----------------------
Steve Stites

Re:If there was any proof....

[fwarren]

Why hold the lawyers responsible? Because as soon as they looked at the APA AND the fact that they knew or should have known that SCO called and AKSED for the pattens within 2 months of hiring Boise. They knew that their client did NOT own unix copyrights, all they owned was. 1. SCO Unixware 2. the righg to collect Unix license money and to pass 100% of it back to Novell 3. The right to receive 5% of that Unix license money back from Novel as payment for collecting it in the first place. 4. Any copyrights for new stuff they created since they acquired Unixware 5. The obligation to listen to Novel as far as who to sue/not sue collect/not collect in relation to Unix. Boise should have turned the case down. As an officer of the court they should have informed their client that they did not own any of the copyrights. That even if their was a cloud of doubt, once they phoned Novell for them, they had screwed the pooch and could not get them. That they did not have the right to terminate the license to AIX. That even if they had proof of Linux getting stuff from Unix via IBM, that they did not own those copyrights and should just "let it go". That they had no grounds to sue Novell for Slander of Title and every reason to believe that it would NOT be in the best interests of their client to do so. To not make an attempt to mitigate their clients damage by letting linux users know what they claimed to own. "You know you have stolen it, and we are going to let you continue to steal it and then you will have to pay us for it when we prove it in court four years from now", just does not fly as living up to the standard of being an office of the court. With what Boise should have known from day one, they should not have taken the case. If they figured it out later, they should have persuaded their client to change what they were doing, even if it meant losing the case. All of this does not even take into account the fact that the Unix copyrights are so muddied by the amount of material that has been published about the inner workings of UNIX that there pretty much are not trade secretes or protected materials that had not already been exposed. That SCO was a member of UnitedLinux and had a covenant to NOT sue other members. Thta SCO had distributed and continued to distribute LINUX with the very "IBM" included stuff in the linux kernel, so they were furthing their own harm. Yup, the judge should bitch slap them back to 2003. Then put their head on a pike as a reminder to other lawyers that no matter how large the retainer is, you can't get away with taking a case that you know is a sham and just walk away from it at the end.

Re:McBride Goeth Before a Fall.

[trolltalk.com]

"Essentially all that's changed is that you won't be able to point and laugh at them on Yahoo Finance anymore."

Wanna bet? Alternate link to yahoo message board for SCOX [yahoo.com].

If anyone deserves to be kicked on the way down, its' these SCOXsuckers ...