SCO Quietly Seeks Another Review of IBM Decision
Date: Tuesday, December 19 2006 @ 11:12:09 EST
Topic: SCO related
SCO wants U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball to take another look at his
Nov. 29 decision to uphold Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells' June ruling
to drop 187 of SCO's list of nearly 300 code-related allegations
against IBM. Observers have said the decision left the Utah company
with a near-worthless shell of a contract and copyright case.
Utah's SCO Group has asked a federal judge to reconsider striking most of the claims from its US$5 billion, Linux-related lawsuit against IBM .
But they don't want anyone to know why.
Keeping It Under Wraps
Attorneys for the Lindon, Utah-based software company, which claims IBM
illegally leaked SCO-owned Unix programming code into the freely
distributed Linux operating system, filed supporting documents for their reconsideration motion under seal last week.
SCO wants to show some new evidence and cites some
technical problems in the decision to be fixed. I can't really discuss
more because [documents are under seal]," SCO attorney Brent Hatch said
Thursday.
IBM, which has steadfastly declined to comment on developments in the suit, had no comment.
Both sides in the suit filed by SCO in March 2003 have filed documents under seal involving proprietary software and projects.
Not Much Left
SCO wants U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball to take another look at his
Nov. 29 decision to uphold Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells' June ruling
to drop 187 of SCO's list of nearly 300 code-related allegations
against IBM. Observers have said the decision left the Utah company
with a near-worthless shell of a contract and copyright case.
Following a six-week review of Wells' ruling, Kimball had not
only upheld her decision in its entirety but chastised SCO for failure
to obey repeated court orders to back up its claims.
The judge also ordered a separate but related suit involving Novell's challenge to SCO's claims of Unix ownership be tried next September, before the currently unscheduled IBM trial.
A Novell victory would likely deliver a coup de grace to
SCO's suit against Big Blue, since Unix ownership is key to that
action.
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