Final Judgment — SCO Loses, Owes $3,506,526 265
Xenographic writes "SCO has finally lost to Novell, now that Judge Kimball has entered final judgment against SCO. Of course, this is SCO we're talking about. There's still the litigation in bankruptcy court, which allowed this case to resume so that they could figure out just how much SCO owes, which is $3,506,526, if I calculated the interest properly, $625,486.90 of which will go into a constructive trust. And then there's the possibility that SCO could seek to have the judgment overturned in the appeals courts, or even the Supreme Court when that fails. Of course, they need money to do that and they don't really have much of that any more. Remember how Enderle, O'Gara and company told us that SCO was sure to win? I wonder how many people have emailed them to say, 'I told you so.'"
Re:I for one (Score:5, Informative)
This ain't it.
Novell is done (modulo appeals and the arbitration -- see below).
Still pending
* Bankruptcy
* SuSE UnitedLinux arbitration (stayed pending resolution of BK)
* IBM's counterclaims (stayed pending resolution of BK)
* RedHat (stayed pending IBM)
* AutoZone (technically still alive, don't believe anyone's ever going to finish it. Stayed pending IBM, I believe).
Re:Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:5, Informative)
Been living under a rock for the last year?
Novell was found to own the copyrights to Unix, not SCO [wikipedia.org]
Effectively, case dismissed.
Re:This is great news (Score:5, Informative)
Many times when companies die (for legal reasons) the Management just creates a new company.
You mean like when SCO setup a company in the far-east and tried to transfer their assets to it?
Or like when SCO proposed splitting its company in two, with one part taking all the assets, and the other part taking the legal claims?
Re:Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:2, Informative)
How much do they have (Score:4, Informative)
So they now owe Novell $3.5 million or so. A look at their June '08 financials ( http://finance.google.com/finance?hl=en&fkt=917&fsdt=2133&q=SCOX&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=we [google.com] ) makes it look like SCO is currently worth $8.96 million. Of course, then they have $5.85 million in current liabilities. Add in this $3.5 million and SCO's wallet runs dry (and then some). Of course, this doesn't take into account liabilities that they don't need to pay back immediately. Things like that will come up in any bankruptcy hearing.
The end result is that the amount of the award is basically meaningless. Novell may not see that entire figure (if anything) due to SCO going bankrupt. It's the ruling itself that is important. All of SCO's claims were knocked down. Novell's claims were either upheld, made moot by further developments, or voluntarily dismissed. SCO got beat down hard and I don't think they'll be getting back up anytime soon.
Re:What about the license fees? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Isn't this just Novell's suit against SCO? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How much do they have (Score:5, Informative)
Novell may not see that entire figure (if anything) due to SCO going bankrupt.
Actually, my understanding is that Novell gets paid before anyone else, since the judge ruled that SCO is actually holding Novell's money improperly (converting it?). It's not like a normal debt where the judge says "you owe them this much money", but where the judge says "that stack of money right there belongs to Novell - hand it over."
Re:Enderle matters? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Chapter 7? (Score:5, Informative)
This is close to being it...they're guilty of conversion. That transforms them into a priority creditor with a 3.5 million dollar claim to things before anything else.
I doubt SCOX could mount an appeal effort. If they could, it's going to have to be something where they had some tidbit of the law overlooked where they didn't get a fair trial, because there's nothing else for them to actually appeal otherwise.
Re:"a complete waste" (Score:2, Informative)
Constructive Trust (Score:5, Informative)
A constructive trust is a trust (a legal duty to a beneficiary by the person in possession of something) that has been created by a court. There are many types of trust, but they all essentially mean the same: There is something (in trust) that you never had the authority over in the first place because it belonged to someone else (the beneficiary).
As an example, in many places a constructive trust in bankruptcy exists over employee wages such that employees have a superpriority over other creditors (i.e. employees get all their money before creditors get any), but further a the thing held in trust (wages) that was previously given away (to pay creditors) can actually be taken back from subsequent possessors ("restitution"). In other words, anyone given anything by an insolvent (that state of not being able to pay bills that typically precedes a declaration of bankruptcy) company may have to give it up so that employees can get their wages held in trust. Employment law varies wildly- many jurisdictions don't enact a trust- but it's a decent example, easy to relate to.
In the SCO case the trust is over funds, meaning the court has said (by declaring the construction of a trust) that the beneficiary (Novell) of the trust can "follow the money" from SCO to whomever may now hold it because SCO never had a right to the funds in the first place. That may include wages to directors, bank transfers, rent, etc. Further, if SCO is unable to pay the money, and it cannot be traced, anyone that encouraged SCO to spend money that SCO didn't have a right to may have committed a wrong (intentionally, having been complicit or willfully blind) related to the breach of trust.
These are just common law principles for the edification of anyone interested, and the law may very well be quite different in Utah (or most anywhere else). But it's also an oculus into why a constructive may be relevant- and it's not well explained in the article.
Now for a Linux user class action lawsuit vs SCO (Score:3, Informative)
For trying to sell us "Linux Licenses" in order to use Linux legally. Turns out they had no legal basis for those licenses, which is of course "fraud" via a civil court lawsuit.
Now how many Linux users are there? Let's get $1000 each.
SCO has finally lost to Novell... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, no, not finally. They've got more losing to do in the Suse arbitration. And they've got a lot of losing to do yet in the IBM case, as well as the Autozone and Red Hat cases.
It's too bad about the engineers (Score:4, Informative)
There remain a few dedicated and extraordinarily talented kernel engineers embedded within the parasitized husk that now goes by the name "SCO". Among them are people who started work at Bell Labs decades ago, and have thereafter worked continuously on the same evolving UNIX code base through numerous renamings and acquisitions. They have been ill-served by their management for years, and while some ignoramuses will consider them tainted by their association with SCO, they have my greatest respect.
I now return you to the usual hate-fest already in progress.
Re:What about the license fees? (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder about those companies who paid the SCO license fees to use Linux? Are they free now to sue SCO for the license fees they have paid?
Part of that question is who paid, how much they paid, and under what kind of agreement. Note that SCO Source wasn't exactly a cash cow. A SCO financial statement in 2005 claimed $32,000 from the program. That's not much (not that I'd pass up the opportunity to cash that kind of check for personal use).
Also take in to count dupes like EV1. Their "estimated over $1M" deal actually was $800k. And it included this little gem:
What other details exist in these (few) other deals?
Re: The stock price (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I for one (Score:4, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=sco [slashdot.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group [wikipedia.org]
http://www.groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net]
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=JfK&q=SCO+lawsuit&btnG=Search [google.com]
Re:Speaking of losers... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm pretty sure the contracts would have been vague enough that there are no refunds. Something along the lines of "we indemnify you against all IP issues that may or may not exist".
Re:Is this truly the end? (Score:3, Informative)
In this case we have a bit of burnt drum head and a couple wisps of pink Fur.
The Docket entry
"11/20/2008 565 - FINAL JUDGMENT in favor of Novell, Inc., SCO Group and also against Novell, Inc., SCO Group. Case Closed. Magistrate Judge Brooke C. Wells no longer assigned to case. See Judgment for details. Signed by Judge Dale A. Kimball on 11/20/08. (ce) (Entered: 11/20/2008) "
and as far as the other cases/rings in this circus
TSCOG V IBM : In front of Judge Kimball all IBM wants is the gavel (and the CxOs heads on pikes ala B5s Morden but...) they don't care about money at this point
the Suse arbitration: from the order "4. With respect to Novell's claims for Declaratory Relief (Count IV), pursuant to the Court's Memorandum Decision and Order dated August 10, 2007, Novell is entitled to direct SCO to waive claims against IBM, Sequent, and other SVRX licensees; Novell is entitled to waive such claims on SCO's behalf; and SCO is obligated to recognize such a waiver." so DEAD CASE
AutoZone: Dead case
Redhat: see the order DEAD CASE.
The fat lady may sings a couple songs be She is definitely singing
Re:I for one (Score:5, Informative)
In 2002, SCO had a new CEO, Darl McBride. SCO wasn't doing so well; their primary product was a version of Unix that ran on Intel machines, but they were competing with Linux for that same market. And Linux is free, and the new hotness in Unix-style operating systems.
Somehow Darl learned that SCO owned Unix, i.e. the copyrights to the source. And he was led to believe that the code in Unix had leaked into Linux. So he came up with a new money making plan:
This wouldn't work very well for most customers, since SCO's market was mostly small businesses.
But there was a big fish he could go after: IBM. You see, IBM was a licensee of the AT&T Unix that SCO owned. IBM derived its own versions of Unix from it. And as part of that, IBM enhanced its own Unix with new technologies. And IBM also contributed those same new technologies, which IBM had developed on its own, to Linux.
So Darl's theory was that SCO not only owned the rights to its own Unix, and to the AT&T Unix that it had acquired, but also to every version of Unix that was derived from them by a licensee. So, he could sue IBM for leaking SCO's property to Linux, and he could sue any company that used Linux (unless they paid SCO an extortion fee not to).
The SCO Group sued IBM for $1 billion dollars!
(A common theory is that SCO expected IBM to just buy SCO to make the problem go away, thus enabling Darl and the other SCO executives to cash in their SCOX shares at a profit.)
We'll skip all the counter lawsuits, ridiculous claims by SCO, Microsoft's part in it, the suits by SCO against other customers, and get to the best part:
Remember that it all started because the SCO Group's predecessor (The Santa Cruz Operation) had purchased the AT&T Unix copyrights from Novell. Well it turns out that they didn't. What they purchased was the right to market and license it. And to collect licensing fees, for which they had to pay Novell a portion. They did not actually own the copyrights or any substantial amount of intellectual property.
So Novell sued SCO, claiming that a) SCO didn't own anything, and b) SCO owed Novell money, because the SCO Group hadn't been paying Novell their share of the licensing fees.
Novell won, and SCO went bankrupt.
You missed step 3 (Score:2, Informative)
Novell actually countersued SCO. SCO had sued them first for publicly contradicting SCO's claim to hold the Unix copyrights.
Oh, and Novell's countersuit included the claims that SCO did not have the rights to make the deals they did with Sun and Microsoft without Novell's approval.
The judge agreed with Novell on the copyrights, the license payments, and the Sun deal, but not the Microsoft deal.
SCO lost a lot of ammunition against IBM due to the Novell rulings as well as rulings in IBM itself, but not all the claims have been lost yet, and IBM has also countersued.
So, don't put the popcorn away yet. More smackdowns of SCO are yet to come.