More than four years after filing a lawsuit about alleged misuse of the Unix operating system, the SCO Group will get its days in court, beginning today in Salt Lake City.
Somehow I don’t think so. SCO has managed to use the legal system to its advantage for years. Somehow it manages to appeal things, and somehow it keeps managing to find people to help bankroll its efforts.
More than four years after filing a lawsuit about alleged misuse of the Unix operating system, the SCO Group will get its days in court, beginning today in Salt Lake City.
Kimball’s ruling not only put SCO’s claims against IBM in jeopardy but also left it with a potential bill from Novell for Unix fees for as much as $37 million. The trial that begins Tuesday is to determine how much, if anything, The SCO Group owes Novell.
But Lee Hollaar, a professor of computer science at the University of Utah who teaches classes on intellectual property law, said last week the trial is a shadow of what the original case promised to become.
As expected, Groklaw was right at the centre of things, predicting how things would develop.
How the Trial Will Go, Beginning Tomorrow (SCO v. Novell)
The trial in SCO v. Novell — which has morphed into exclusively Novell’s counterclaims against SCO — begins tomorrow morning, and the parties have filed a Joint Pretrial Stipulation [PDF] and then an Amended one [PDF]. For purposes of this trial, Novell is the plaintiff and SCO the defendant, so Novell will be going first. Thanks to the Stipulation, we know how the trial is structured. Each side will limit itself to 10 hours. It’s 10 hours sort of like football, though, so don’t imagine it will all be over in, say, a long day or two days. A football team might have a minute left on the clock, but it takes a half hour to play it out. Similarly here, 10 hours each doesn’t count things like conferences with the judge at the bench and things like that.
Lawyers for The SCO Group Inc. told a federal judge Tuesday that anything it might owe to Novell Inc. for improperly licensing an older version of the Unix computer operating system to other companies is minimal.
But Novell attorneys told U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball that the pre-1995 version of Unix to which it still holds the copyright, under an earlier ruling by the judge, was a substantial part of what SCO licensed in agreements with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and other companies.
Mighty Wayne, whom I correspond with sometimes, has joined Ars Technica and recently began covering the SCO case as well. He lives nearby. For an article with some humour and fairly clear bias, consider this.
Novell grilled McBride for the better part of 10 minutes about “filling a form 10-K or 10-Q with the SEC that contained a false statement.” Novell’s counsel reiterated that two separate 10-Q forms filed by SCO did not include Sun or Microsoft revenue generated by UnixWare licenses. McBride adamantly denied any wrong doing, saying that the licenses were for the trunk of SCO intellectual property consisting of multiple brands, not the UnixWare product branch. This was the most hostile point of the day, with the council asking him the same question in several different ways. After two hours on the stand, McBride stepped down.
Watch the tags and the caption on the image.
It was claimed yesterday that Groklaw is being flooded by participation which includes SCO employees. Someone told me this by E-mail and pointed at some evidence (he has read Groklaw for years). Here are some transcripts Groklaw got hold of, thanks to various people who are physically there.
Novell Corp. says SCO Group Inc. owes it nearly $20 million. SCO says it owes Novell virtually nothing.
Those two stances are the focus of a four-day trial that started Tuesday in federal court in Salt Lake City. The companies fighting over Lindon-based SCO’s licensure of certain technologies in 2003 and 2004 and how much Novell should get from that licensing.
After many hasty speculations [1, 2, 3] Novell has insisted that it is not the next SCO [1], but the following last article raises a brow.
Novell may expand its claims
Company says Unix also found in Microsoft, Sun Microsystems products
Issues at a trial involving The SCO Group Inc. and Novell Inc. threatened Wednesday to spill out once again into the wider software industry, with a Novell attorney indicating it might make claims against Microsoft and Sun Microsystems over Unix code in their products.
Novell presented letters it sent last year to Microsoft and Sun in which Novell said it did not believe that licensing agreements between those companies and The SCO Group were valid. As a result, the letters said, the two companies could be “exposed” to claims by Novell.
Don’t forget the many millions of dollars Microsoft is likely to pay Novell in the WordPerfect trial.
Why patent for innovation when you can patent just for profit?
To those who do not know, Ray Niro is a man ‘fortunate’ (or rather notorious) enough to have earned the crown bearing the letters “FATHER OF PATENT TROLLING” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. That is of course one among several factors that rendered the function of the USPTO moot, obsolete and so utterly broken.
Having harassed a blogger (headhunting), Niro now picks another fight with — you’ve guessed it — another fellow troll.
Some interesting developments in the Global Patent Holdings litigation going on in Nevada (against Zappos) and Florida (against Boca Resort). The long sad story is below, but for those with a short attention span, here is the abbreviated version: Essentially, Global Patent Holdings, hurting that Boca Resort called it a patent troll, said “oh yeah, GPH is really an 80-year-old and a 70-year-old in a wheelchair - who you callin’ troll, son of Enron?” Meanwhile, at the same time in Nevada, GPH told the court that it, not the inventors, owned the rights to the patents. Boca Resort replied by saying, “Hey Niro, you started it - you were the one who wrote the article saying you’re a patent troll anyway. And by the way, if the inventors have a stake, then where’s the real party in interest? Dismiss this case, your honor!”
Yes, that’s the crazy life of people who made a fortune by exploiting every loophole in the system, thereby making a complete mockery of it.
Do you want to see some really crazy and outrageous patent? Here is a good new example from Zoobab at Digital Majority. It’s a total ripoff.
Thanks Huwaii and Miao for this great invention and stealing my work. I really appreciate it. I bet Marshall T. Rose will also be delighted.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) could reconsider its own landmark decision on business method patents after ordering an en banc hearing in an appeal from the USPTO
Things have never looked worse for the USPTO, but the good news is that more and more people are becoming aware of the problem. This makes a crowd that will have the system put under greater pressure to get its act together and rectify itself.
Many of us were taught that the purpose of patents is to protect ourselves and to spur innovation. These goals must now be met by restoring order. Taking care of the likes of Ray Niro would make a fine start. █
Anti virus developer Trend Micro accused Barracuda Networks of patent infringement but what they really did was attacking the users of ClamAV free anti virus software with a bogus patent. ¶
Given the nature of the accusation (a poor patent as well as software patent used against Free software), this action against Trend Micro seems justified. It’s another case of a struggling company clinging onto man-made intellectual monopolies and trying to find haven in the courts. This didn’t work too well for SCO. █
“If seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work. Maybe there is no way Io avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we can define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this.”
• Techniques for dynamically establishing and managing trust relationships. Lloyd Leon Burch, Payson; Douglas G. Earl, Orem; Stephen R. Carter, Spanish Fork. Assigned to Novell Inc., Provo. Filed Feb. 3, 2004. Patent No. 7,316,027.
Microsoft, like Novell, likes patents. But its loveraffair with patents has been reaching some worrisome peaks recently and it’s not hard to see why.
Fact: According to the latest annual report on patents released this month, the number of patents awarded in 2007 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was down a full 9.5 percent from 2006’s all-time high. In addition, some 80 percent of the companies on the list of top recipients (including IBM, repeating for its 14th straight year at the top of the list) received fewer patents than they had the year before. Only one American company in the top 25 earned more patents in 2007 than it had the year before: Microsoft.
Meanwhile, be aware that there is a legal attack on ClamAV, which is open source.
We have another Pick Your Brain request. This one comes from Barracuda Networks, the email and web security appliances company, but it’s about an attack on ClamAV, the Open Source antivirus product.
Barracuda Networks is actively seeking the support of the free and open source software (FOSS) community in its battle against a patent suit brought against it by Trend Micro. The suit revolves around Barracuda’s distribution of Clam Antivirus (ClamAV), the well-known FOSS security software, with its firewall and Web filter hardware appliances.
The case is the second piece of software patent litigation to directly involve FOSS. The first was a case brought against Red Hat and Novell by IP Innovation for the inclusion of virtual workspaces in their Linux distributions.
Those who do not know why Microsoft uses (as in “exploits”) Novell for Mono, Moonlight, OOXML and so forth ought to pay closer attention. Novell does a great disservice to Free software by facilitating Microsoft’s framework and making it more prevalent rather than reject it for what it is and what it is intended to achieve in the long term.
European antitrust regulators are kicking off two new Microsoft antitrust investigations, one of which involves products and technologies for which Microsoft allegedly is withholding interoperability information, including its .Net framework, Office Open XML (OOXML) document format and various server products.
More disturbing to the mind, however, was the find that comes from noooxml.org at the moment. Have a look at their analysis of a proposal that is being pushed in Greece.
Microsoft Hellas proposes a contract that will take over control of the sovereign European state. Greece would lose the right to speak about other products its government uses and gain the right to support the business interests of the vendor and its policy goals.
[…]
Nice proposal, Microsoft will help Greece to spy on its ICT infrastructure in order to weaken the procurement power of Greece for the benefit of the supplier. Win-Win, right?
Watch the video which is contained in this post about the way Microsoft ‘buys’ Europe. It is about Greece and it shows some contract signing with accompanying context. Do follow the link if you wish to understand the degree of manipulation and its associated dangers. █
That truly sounded like old news, but it’s not. This case of deja vu is brand new and it’s very familiar.
Nortel Networks Corp., the Canadian maker of telecom equipment, filed a lawsuit on Friday against Vonage — claiming that it violated nine patents related to Internet phone services and related features such as 911 and 411 calling and click to call.
Vonage’s long-going soap opera with patents has earned it a lot of unwanted attention. There are some satirical videos, including this one.
One patent case that we have followed quite thoroughly involves Nokia and Qualcomm, where an actual embargo is the current outcome [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. That is a very severe action that brings benefits to no-one. It is a punishment without winners. Meanwhile, no resolution has been approached.
The ITC, which determines whether imports unfairly injure U.S. companies, must now decide if it will uphold Luckern’s decision. The agency has said it aims to reach a decision by March 12, 2008.
At the end of the day, as frustrating as software patents can be, remember that there are far worst examples. The video presents a protest.
Consider the pharmaceutical case a situation where patents actually kill — a situation where commoditisation would be more humane than monetary lust. █
Microsoft said on Wednesday it had formally withdrawn two remaining appeals before the European Union’s Court of First Instance against European Commission antitrust decisions.
The following new article indicates that Microsoft is unlikely to escape heavy fine though. In fact, billions in fines are foreseen, but given what Microsoft has just achieved in Europe, these fines are insignificant in the long term. Europe has mistakenly enabled Microsoft to continue its monopoly abuse and exclude Free software rivals.
More about the appeals:
It [Microsoft] also appealed against the Commission’s demands that it make the protocols available to open-source software developers.
However, in light of the agreement reached between Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes on Monday, these appeals became redundant.
What a disaster. In South Korea, a lawsuit has meanwhile been launched to protest against monopoly abuse.
According to Korean newspaper Chosun, the US software mammoth has been accused of causing a loss in sales revenue estimated at W30bn (US$1=W918) because the firm’s Windows operating system comes pre-loaded with a media player and instant messaging.
Seoul Central District Court confirmed yesterday that Digito was suing Microsoft in the US and Korea, claiming that the software giant had violated the Fair Trade Act since 2000.
This was pretty much foreseen. Hopefully, lawsuits in Asia will be more fruitful. They also prove that complaints about Microsoft are consistent and they are not a case of Europe being “anti-American” (some such accusations are made).
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more
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Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.