Re: [opensuse] Groklaw - Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive!

Jerry Feldman wrote:

On Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:15:35 -0400 James Knott wrote:

...

You might want to do some reading on Groklaw about this. One thing the court made clear, was that since the original SCO didn't have the money to buy Unix outright, Novell came up with a license deal, where they retained the copyrights among other things, until the new SCO forwarded enough license revenue to complete the deal. This means that had sufficient revenue come from SCO, all rights would have been transferred to them. So, they did not buy a "bill of goods". As for the derivative works, what SCO claims greatly exceeds what the original arrangement was with AT&T, which AT&T verified in a letter to IBM and elsewhere. SCO then tried to retroactively and unilaterally claim much more.

You are confusing The Santa Cruz Operation - the company that bought the Unix licenses from Novell with The SCO Group which is formerly Caldera that bought the The Santa Cruz Operation Unix division. What I meant by "bill of goods" refers to Caldera's purchasing The Santa Cruz Operation's Unix division. When Caldera International acquired that division, the question is did they think they were getting all the copyrights. I'm 100% sure that The Santa Cruz Operation knew what they were getting from Novell.

According to the various dates shown in evidence, tSCOg knew, at the end of 2002, that they didn't have copyright. This is before the lawsuits and before the SCOsource scam.

While I think that SCO's "derivative works" claim is weak, they are challenging this in the court. IBM's problem in that side is the terms in the official contract vs. the later communications. I'm 100% certain that IBM would never have agreed to the original "derivative works" clause, but what matters is the legality of the documentation. Can IBM prove to the court that the contract was amended to remove the "derivative works" clause. However, I do agree that SCO's interpretation is somewhat bizarre, but both SCO and IBM have some of the best attorneys available. So until it is adjudicated either by a Judge Kimball judgement or the result of the trial, it is still on the table.

IBM had clarified the terms with AT&T, long before this nonsense started. Also, if SCO claims that their idea of derivative works applies to IBM, then it must also apply to their own work after 1995, as it's the same original AT&T code in question. They can't have it both ways. If they own IBM's work (ignoring who actually owned Unix copyright) then Novell owns whatever SCO had created, since Novell has been found to own the copyrights. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org