June 10, 2004

SCO is Going Down

SCO has lost the opening round of their slander of title suit against Novell.

From Groklaw:

The big news is that SCO lost its fight to get the case sent back to state court. SCO's entire theory of the case as a contract issue only went out the window, and they are now squarely in a pure copyright fight, which is the last thing they wanted. They will now have to prove that they own the copyright they are using to threaten end users like AutoZone. Kimball agrees with Novell that there are serious questions about whether the agreement even as amended by Amendment 2 is sufficient to be a copyright conveyance, and that means it stays in federal court. He retains jurisdiction. Remember all the experts who told us SCO might win this? They were mistaken.

Darl McBride waxed eloquent today in the quarterly conference call discussing the Novell suit, and how they were going to win it and move on with their extortion. D'oh!

By keeping the case in federal jurisdiction, it must be fought as a copyright case, not a contract case. By agreeing with Novell, Judge Kimball is saying that SCO's case that they own the copyright is not a slam dunk.

This could really be the beginning of the end. If they don't own the copyrights, even Microsoft can't save them.

The fun part will be seeing how Laura Didio and Rob Enderle explain themselves after SCO is emasculated in court. Their credibility as "analysts" should be pretty much in the toilet, where it belongs.

Posted on June 10, 2004 10:48 PM