SCO v. IBM Is Officially Reopened | Hacker News Reader

SCO v. IBM Is Officially Reopened

groklaw.net

51 pointsrpledge13 comments

Okay, I read this article and what of the comments I could stomach with the awful commenting system on there and I guess it's just that I've tried to flush this entire thing from my mind after spending years of concern about it. I understand that the judge decided to allow a reopening of certain aspects of the case v. IBM because he decided it was improperly closed.

But from what I understood, the decision v. Novell essentially stripped SCO of any claims of copyright to Unix. Now I know the IBM lawsuit revolved around some slightly different issues from the Novell one, but if SCO has no copyright claims, how is it even paying counsel to sue someone?

Is this just a leftover pile of money that's literally doing nothing but funding a series of doomed lawsuits?

I understand from a strictly legal standpoint they are allowed to go on with certain claims but from a practical standpoint, I just don't get it. If there is a leftover pile of money, wouldn't it be smarter to actually, you know, invest this in creating an actual business rather than have it be a lawyer welfare fund?

The company is bankrupt. Their only remaining asset of note is this lawsuit. As I understand it, the judge is letting this lawsuit go forward in the hope of extracting enough money to pay off the creditors more fully than they otherwise could.

So yeah, it is a pile of leftover money that is pursuing the lawsuit to the bitter end prior to handing back what little remains to the various creditors.

Realistically, aren't they only going to rack up more debt that they will have to pay off, in the form of lawyer fees?

I think that they can't rack up debt because nobody in their right minds will lend them money. They will just pay less to existing creditors.

Admittedly I'm sure there is some expense to running these lawsuits, but Boise Schiller (?) took on the suit with a cap on the cost to SCO: that is to say, right now, they're required to do all of this on their own dime.

It was never closed at all SCO managed to get it frozen while they were in bankruptcy.

There is no leftover pile of money. SCO's only "asset" is their interest in this lawsuit, and the fact that their lawyers are on the hook to ligitate it for them all the way to the Supreme Court (in the highly unlikely event that it goes that far), for no more cost to SCO.

I see, so basically counsel was already paid and now they're stuck with this case until its final thrashing death. I have a hard time processing that mentally but it makes a lot more sense than my money pile hypothesis.

What a waste of court resources.

Okay, time for a serious question.

IBM has money, and SCO's lawyers gave them a fee cap. So this endless litigation is not wrecking anyone's life. Mostly it's just an annoyance to IBM and to SCO's lawyers.

But suppose it weren't IBM. Suppose SCO were suing me. Or you. Being hounded for over a decade by the ghost of a company, which remains in existence solely for the purpose of suing you sounds horrible. And since I/you may very well have done nothing wrong, this is an unacceptable situation.

Now, I would hope that a good judge would realize this. Just about all the articles I've read concerning this case are about the court asking SCO to clarify something. And, indeed, here we read:

> So it's going to go like this:

> 1. SCO must file a brief statement identifying the claims ....

So I would imagine that our hypothetical good judge would stick up for me/you by simply saying to SCO, "You need to make a clear statement about what you are claiming, and we're not going to waste any more time with you until you do."

But then I wonder why the judge couldn't simply have done that in this case, too -- a decade ago.

Clearly the only sensible thing to do at this point is for the court to grant SCO title to Blackacre in lieu of economic damages.

SCO v. IBM, aka "The Thing That Wouldn't Die"

sigh

Further dragging through the mud of the name of a once great company.

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