Latest on SCO vs. Novell

[Jerry Feldman]

http://www.groklaw.net/
Last Friday was the deadline for discovery in this case. 
Among other things, Novell produced some declarations from the lead
outside attorneys who negotiated the contract with Santa Cruz as well
as David Bradford who was Senior Vice-president, General Counsel and
Corporate Secretary or Novell at the time, and he supervised the
contract and amendments. 

The bottom line is that from the outset, Novell's intent was to retain
all copyrights and patents. This was confirmed not only by the
attorneys who drafted the agreement and Amendment 2, but also by the
Novell Board of Directors minutes. The issue at the time was that
Novell was concerned about the status of the copyrights and patents
should Santa Cruz file bankruptcy. By retaining the copyrights and
patents, Novell would be protected. 

Since discovery is over, Judge Kimball now may rule on both the
copyright issue as well as a few other issues. Remember, that Novell
countersued SCO because of royalites it never received from SCO. 

Unless SCO comes out with a bombshell, it appears that Kimball would
probably rule in favor of Novell's ownership of the copyrights and
patents as this is a very critical issue in both this case, but also
the SCO vs. IBM case. Although, SCO vs. IBM is a contract dispute over
the derivative works IBM contributed to LInux, SMP, JFS, and NUMA which
could be interpreted as violations of its System V contract, the
copyright issues have also been raised. I'm sure that SCO's attorneys,
the best that money can buy (eg. Boise and Schiller) will come up with
something to prolong the case and keep Judges Kimball and Wells busy
until they both retire :-)

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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