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Jun. 11, 2010

Well the never ending, six-year-long SCO-Novell court battle is finally over!

A high-ranking U.S. judge ruled that Novell did indeed own all Unix patents copyrights which SCO failed to license properly and therefore the case is finally closed and was rejected, to the detriment of SCO.

This case should have been closed a long time before, but SCO kept coming back to the charge all the time. I guess they have lawyer money to throw out the window...

In the words of Judge Ted Stewart "The jury could have rejected the testimony of SCO's witnesses for a number of reasons, including their lack of involvement in drafting the APA, the fact that there was little testimony on any actual discussions concerning the transfer of copyrights, or that many of the witnesses had a financial interest in the litigation."

SCO became little more than a source of lawyers' letters and was seen by many as the arch nemesis to the development of Linux. So now, the open source community and all its many Linux lovers can finally rejoice and celebrate once and for all.

We all knew it would end that way-- we just didn't know when it would end.

Of course there are also other similar cases pending, including one against IBM, but they depended on the final outcome of the SCO-Novell litigation for its ultimate direction and scope.

The case began in 2004 over a patent transfer agreement originally made in 1995.

Going back a few months ago, SCO's former CEO Darl McBride, who was called as a prime witness, confirmed that SCO didn't need the original copyrights for the development of its family of operating systems, and that the copyrights were only required for the licensing business of the vendor's SCO Source division.

The previously unaware jury members were informed that a judge had already delivered a ruling in that matter more than 2 1/2 years ago, but that his decision had been overturned since.

So is this just a coincidence? That's pretty good timing some think...

At any rate, the current jury trial became necessary after a Court of Appeals last year overturned the first instance ruling passed by district judge Dale Kimball in October 2007.

The Court of Appeals ruled that the question whether the copyright to Unix was transferred when Novell sold its Unix distribution rights to SCO should be retried. In the court's opinion, this question was so involved that it should be tried by an unbiased jury instead of a district judge.

Consequently, a jury without any prior knowledge of the long case history was sworn in to decide on the copyright question in the first week of the appeal trial. There's no question now that Novell wants to put that puppy to bed once and for all.

During the testimony of a financial expert on day nine of the trial, the questioning of a witness on day eight of the trial had revealed that the copyright question is closely tied to the issuing of the antidote licences SCO intended sell to corporate Linux customers.

Antidote licenses? Come on, be serious McBride!!

While we're on the topic of McBride, rumor has it that he's now looking for a new job.

Did he apply for a job a Microsoft? That's another rumor too, by the way! Of course we can't help but being sarcastic when the names SCO and McBride come up these days.

Oh, and by the way: the Court's ruling is final and SCO can't appeal that case.

We will keep you posted...

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Source: Novell.

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