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SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order to Confine, as text
Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 12:08 PM EDT

It has been my experience in life that when folks decide to tell fibs, unless they are five years old, they do usually have a story prepared in case they are caught.

Here's SCO's Sur-Surreply Memorandum in Further Support of its Objections to the Magistrate Judge's Order on IBM's Motion to Confine (PDF), as text, which is, I believe, SCO's alibi as to why it did not put all its "materials" on the table by the deadline. I think I'd like to call this SCO's "what is truth?" memorandum.

I got the impression, as did Judge Wells, that it was a plan, a strategy, to ambush IBM. Not so, says SCO. It's not like that at all. SCO argues in essence that they were not required to put everything on the table by December 2005; they didn't have to answer interrogatories until their expert reports were due. Besides, their definition of "allegedly misused materials" isn't the same as IBM's and the court goofed by going along with IBM's interpretation. And you don't have to be the copyright holder to sue for copyright infringement. An exclusive licensee can do that. They don't technically claim to be an exclusive licensee, but maybe the judge won't notice.

This document is also remarkable in that SCO now claims that it never said there was a mountain of copyright infringement, except in the context of contract claims:

IBM also previously said that "SCO had spent more than three years developing its theory of infringement," but the record does not support that assertion with respect to Dr. Cargill's opinions in particular. The record shows that as of early 2005, SCO did not even regard itself as having brought a copyright claim in this case. (See, e.g., SCO's Opening Mem. at 18.) IBM now says (at 19) the proof that SCO spent three years developing that theory is "a plethora of public statements since 2003 regarding its claim that Linux infringes SCO's copyrights." The statements at issue in the articles that IBM cites do not support IBM's argument with respect to Dr. Cargill's work, and in several instances directly refute IBM's argument...

Indeed, Dr. Cargill testified at deposition that he had spent only approximately 400-500 hours writing all three of his expert reports. The record thus puts the lie to IBM's repeated assertion that Dr. Cargill's expert opinion on substantial similarity "reinvents" SCO's case from what it was in 2003, 2004, or 2005. It should be self-evident (as IBM says) that where SCO spent only months developing the analysis of substantial similarity at issue, it would have required IBM and its experts only months to respond.

*Now* they tell us it wasn't about copyright. Of course, that's not how you remember it, nor I. It was always about copyright, since 2003. If it was just about contracts, then perhaps SCO would like to explain why it sent end users letters about infringement. And what were the threats to Red Hat about? They are not in contract with SCO. And what was SCOsource supposed to cover? Contract violations? If it was, I think that might be fraud, since I can't think of any theory whereby end users not in a contract would be responsible for contract violations by somebody else. Well, perhaps you don't want to get me started on the subject of fraud and SCOsource.

The thing about fibbing is, it's hard to keep everything straight.

For some proof that SCO absolutely did talk about copyright infringement, and specifically about nonliteral copyright infringement since 2003, not 2005, here's the transcript of SCO's conference call in 2003, on July 21, which David Boies attended, in which they talked about SCO's copyright infringement claims and what they intended to do about copyright infringement, including SCOsource. Here's just one section:

McBride: OK, thanks Blake. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our call. I'd like to start by updating you on recent developments at SCO. After my comments we'll then take your questions. SCO's legal counsel, David Boies, is available on this call to help address questions you might have regarding SCO's legal position.

In May 2003, SCO warned Global 1500 companies that enterprise use of the Linux operating system may violate intellectual property rights in the Unix operating system. Today we confirm that fact. Enterprise use of any Linux distribution based on the 2.4 Linux kernel contains software code that was misappropriated from Unix. This directly violates SCO's copyrights and contract rights in the Unix System V operating system. Linux contains hundreds of files of software code taken directly from Unix System V or from derivative works protected by Unix System V licenses.

This infringing code falls into three categories. First, literal copying of Unix System V source code. Second, literal copying of code from Unix System V derivative works without authority. And third, non-literal copying of the structure, sequence and organization of Unix System V.

Much of the infringing code deals with new multiprocessor capabilities inside of Linux. This isn't a matter of changing a line or two of code. If all of the infringing code were removed today, Linux would have little multiprocessor code left and would be totally ineffective for enterprise use.

The infringing elements found inside Linux are all protected by US and international copyright laws. SCO announces today that it has registered all of its System V copyrights, so that it can enforce its copyrights in situations where it becomes necessary....

SCO is trying to find ways to help customers solve this problem balanced against our own legal rights to stop infringing use of Linux. Under US and international copyright law, end users are subject to injunctive relief and damages for improper use of copyrighted works.

With registration of its Unix copyrights, SCO now has broad legal rights against end users with respect to infringing use of the Linux 2.4 kernel release and any future release of the Linux 2.6 kernel.

However, we intend to use these rights carefully and judiciously. In the past weeks, many Linux users have asked us how they can immediately resolve issues with Linux without litigation. This is clearly the path SCO prefers to take in resolving its issues with end users of Linux. Therefore as a viable alternative to legal enforcement against Linux end users, SCO is prepared to offer a license for SCO's UnixWare 713 product for use in conjunction with any Linux offering. Specifically, SCO will hold its licensees harmless and will covenant not to sue such licensees for running Linux in binary format on any CPU licensed under a valid SCO UnixWare 713 license. This licensing format will assure that Linux users are able to run Linux in full compliance with SCO's underlying intellectual property rights....

Definitely this case started off as a contracts case. When we filed it in March we were very clear that we had contract violations that we were concerned with, and we were going and tried for months to resolve with IBM, did not get there and that ended up in litigation.

With respect to the copyrights, very clearly this is news as of today. Very clearly, we have been talking, when we sent out letters in May, we sent out letters letting them know that we had found problems inside of the Linux kernel as it related to our intellectual property. Today is really the formalization of our going down the path of broadening our case to go beyond just contracts, but also to include copyrights.

So what's new today is the copyrights have been registered. We've received the copyright registration notices back from the US copyright office, and so essentially, you know, the legal fairway that we're working with here just got a lot wider.

You have the direct, line by line code that is showing up in there, and it's very stark. When you lay down the UnixWare code base, and you lay down the Linux code base, and you look at them straight across, you can see absolute 100 direct line by line copying that's taken place, including developer comments, errors, typos that were in the developer comments, you know, and so it's very stark. That type of code has come from various vendors, and that type of code is coming from vendors primarily other than from IBM.

With respect to the next category of code we would call the derivative works area, we're seeing a lot code that has come in in just the last year or two, and that has to do with a lot of the SMP, high-end scalable technologies, the NUMA technologies or non-uniform memory access, RCU, read copy update. All of these are technologies that allow you to really take a multi processor configuration and go big time with it. In the early days of Linux and the 2.2 kernel, before it really grew up, you would get two to four processors running simultaneously. And now when we go to 2.4 kernel, you see 16-way, 32-way configurations. With the new 2.6 kernel coming out, it even jumps up higher that that. So you see incredible, enterprise level scalability going on.

Now the other thing that's interesting here is when you compare the amount of source code that was contributed by vendors, in 2.2 kernel versus 2.4 which just came out a couple of years ago you see in the 2.2 area, there was literally no contributions, and since 2.4 has come out, the number of files -- not just lines of code -- but the number of files that has been contributed by our Unix vendors is in the hundreds.

So, that's the second bucket, and then the third bucket is one of non-literal infringing areas of methods and concepts that are still protected under our rights, and that's a broader bucket beyond the first two. ... You know, David, as I understand the copyright side of this, we have broad rights against anybody who's touching that. Well clearly it starts with the end user cause that's where the [inaudible, 21:24] is being held. And you know, no decisions have been made about where we would go if we don't get recourse from the path we're going now. My understanding is it's fairly broadly available to us.

Boies: It is, and under the copyright law, you may sue both for infringement and for what is called contributory infringement. Which is that if anyone contributes to somebody else's infringement, that is somebody who can be sued directly under the copyright laws. So that if a third party distributor was found to have engaged in conduct that contributed to an end user's infringement, that person would also be liable, under the copyright laws.

As you can clearly see, SCO was talking about copyright infringement and specifically mentioned nonliteral infringement way back in 2003. At a minimum, SCO was not only thinking about and talking to the media about nonliteral copyright infringement, it claimed it had evidence of it in 2003, just months after it filed suit against IBM. That's the third bucket. Their expert, Dr. Cargill, wasn't shown that evidence until now? They never mentioned it and he at some point, presumably after the fact discovery deadline, just came up with this theory out of a clear blue sky all by himself?

I doubt it, because I remember this interview with Darl McBride and Chris Sontag in April of 2004, "Why SCO Thinks It Can Win"? It's their Vanilla Ice riffs theory of copyright infringement. Yes, friends, nonliteral copyright infringement. April, 2004. And they said this was the aspect of their case that would win it for them in the end, and they did mean the very end, it turns out:

McBride: A lot of code that you'll be seeing coming on in these copyright cases is not going to be line-by-line code. It will be more along the lines of nonliteral copying, which has more to do with infringement. This has more to do with sequence, organization, which is copyright-protectable. It's interesting when you go down this path that everyone wants to go to the exact lines of code, but most copyright cases…

Sontag: 90 to 95 percent

McBride: …are not line-by-line, exact copies. It's too obvious. Most copyright infringement cases come from these nonliteral implementations of the same code or literary work.

Sontag: My favorite example is the Russian author [Dmitry Yemets], who lost in a copyright case [after being sued by] J.K. Rowling, author of the 'Harry Potter' books, in a Dutch court. He had written a book: It was a girl, not a boy, with magical powers who rides a magical fiddle and not a broom, goes to a boarding school to learn witchcraft and wizardry, plays a game of throwing balls through hoops. All these things were very similar to Harry Potter. Could someone else ever write a book about wizards and witches? Sure. But when the structure and sequence is the same…maybe the words, the code, isn't exactly the same, but Linux is trying to be just like Unix System V. The question is whether Linux was trying to be like Unix System V by doing it in ways that were illegal....

McBride: ... The analogy I like to use is Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" versus David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure." If you just look at the words, I don't see a copyright violation, but if you listen to the riffs, you can hear where they're the same. When everything is said and done, when everything is on the table in the court case, there will be an argument when the Linux guys come in and say, 'Guys, the words are entirely different, how can you say that's a copyright violation?' But there are two parts to this. There are the words that are in the source code, and there's the music underneath. The actual code that drives these ABI files is structurally and sequentially the same....

Sontag: ... [L]ook at dynamic shared libraries; different operating systems implement these very differently. But in Linux and System V, they're implemented in exactly the same way. They could have been done very differently and still accomplish the same thing.

McBride: That's the kind of stuff that we think that, when everything is on the table, will win for us.

Of course, they didn't try to put it on the table in the IBM litigation until fact discovery was closed. But they talked it up plenty outside of court. Actually, in a Declaration by Chris Sontag [PDF] back in April of 2004, SCO said it had found examples of nonliteral copyright infringement, which he listed. I can't help but wonder if those examples showed up on the December 2005 list or only later.

But what do you think? Did Dr. Cargill really just develop this theory after that point in time? Or is Judge Wells absolutely correct, that this was an attempt to ambush IBM and gain an unfair advantage? Say, do you remember SCO "VP" Gregory Blepp's speech in Germany in June of 2004 that we partially translated, with his approval of the translation, in which he also spoke about methods and concepts and nonliteral infringment being part of their case? Clearly this theory is no recent afterthought. And I wrote back in July of 2005 that I guessed that SCO's case was going to turn out to be about methods and concepts and nonliteral infringement. If I knew, they knew, because they read Groklaw fervently.

I will let SCO speak to how discovery is supposed to work, from a reply memorandum it filed with the court in July of 2004, when it wanted all of AIX and Dynix/ptx source code, and which it got:

Discovery is designed to make the investigative process efficient and conducive to truth-finding. IBM has no more right to undermine these goals by blocking discovery than it does to tell the Court what evidence the Court and the jury may see to test the validity of IBM's own claims. Moreover, the question with respect to SCO's requested copyright discovery is not whether SCO possesses some "minimum" amount of evidence that might permit it to prove or defend the claims at issue. Rather, SCO is entitled to the production of all admissible evidence and materials reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, unless the burden to IBM outweighs this broad right in a legally and factually significant manner. In light of the centrality of this evidence to the claims and counterclaims in this case, IBM is hard-pressed to establish any substantial burden that could justify its failure to produce such material.

Words to live by. Words to live by. So why did SCO wait until fact discovery was over to spring a massive new nonliteral copyright infringement claim on IBM? (For fairness, the phrase there about copyright had to do with defending against IBM's copyright claim.)

SCO already tried to argue to this court that it had asserted no copyright claims. The argument was rejected by Judge Kimball back in 2005, when the first round of summary judgments were decided:

Notwithstanding SCO's puzzling denial in its briefing that it has not alleged a claim against IBM for copyright infringement arising out of its use, reproduction, or improvement of Linux, it clearly has alleged such a claim. For example, in its Second Amended Complaint, SCO alleges that IBM has infringed SCO's copyrights by "incorporating (and inducing, encouraging, and enabling others to incorporate) SCO's proprietary software into Linux open source software offerings." Second Am. Compl. at ¶6 (c). In addition, SCO alleges that "a significant amount of UNIX protected code and materials are currently found in Linux 2.4, 2.5x and Linux 2.6 releases in violation of SCO's... copyrights." Id. ¶79. It also alleges that IBM is "improperly extracting and using the confidential and proprietary information it acquired from UNIX and dumping that information into the open source community." Id. ¶110. Finally, it has alleged that IBM has "infringed, [has] induced the infringement of, and [has] contributed to the infringement of, copyright registrations of SCO and its predecessors." Id. ¶ 179.

Notice that the order didn't say that SCO's case included copyright infringement from that day forward. He said it dated from SCO's Second Amended Complaint, at least. SCO filed that in February of 2004. So much for that slice of SCO baloney.

Speaking of which, let's get back to SCO's sur-surreply. I counted 10 separate arguments SCO makes about why it didn't put all its theories/materials on the table by the deadline, and that's only up to page 7, at which point I stopped collecting, because I took a break and was reading Lamlaw, and he says that in his opinion, the true purpose of this filing is just to make IBM work, that this is a classic nuisance lawsuit. The purpose of all the arguments is just to make IBM have to spend money to pay its lawyers to answer each argument. So why am I digging up proofs? It's fun, that's why. Anyway, the bottom line is simple: The discovery rules are clear. You are supposed to tell the other side what your claims are, as SCO helpfully explained to the court.

SCO didn't, and here come the alibis. I am imagining SCO's lawyers sitting around dreaming up this stuff and cackling devilishly.

Here's my collection of reasons SCO gives why sanctions are not fair, until I quit collecting, and for the rest of them, you can read for yourself:

1. The sanction against us is too severe.

2. There's no prejudice to IBM anyway. This is nonsensical. But SCO is arguing that expert discovery isn't generally a long period, so with Novell going first, IBM can use the time. But what that leaves out is that fact discovery in this case went on for, what, 4 years? And IBM had no opportunity to do fact discovery on these new theories.

3. IBM just wants to avoid dealing with our evidence. I think it's safe to say that IBM would like to avoid SCO, period. But had SCO put the evidence on the table, IBM would have dealt with it. It wouldn't even be hard. Just laborious and time-consuming and expensive and stupid.

4. Copyright law conflicts with the Magistrate Judge's Order. Hardy har.

5. SCO didn't have to put its experts analyses on the table by the deadline, only the misused material. The new stuff SCO wants to include is accumulated evidence in support of their experts theories of infringement. SCO put its allegedly misused material on the table. This is other stuff, "other contents in SCO's experts' reports." Whatever that means. Arguments like this may be why IBM has called SCO out for sophistry.

6. The parties don't agree on what constitutes "allegedly misused material". Then SCO should have asked for the judge to clarify a long time ago.

7. Judge Wells used an overly broad standard, as illustrated by her statement that "if it wasn't disclosed" by the deadline, "then it's out". This seems to me to conflict with point number 5. Sophistry can do that to a fellow. But that is their argument: that Tenth Circuit law "makes clear that such information is not part of SCO's legal theory of copyright infringement" and no court order told them to put all their legal theories on the table by the December deadline. Here, I think their lack of tech knowledge has wounded them again. Even if one said that legal theories didn't have to be disclosed, the materials, the code, did have to be. A theory of infringement still has to be tied to code somewhere, and that is what they didn't put on the table. They could have put "the entirety of the Linux kernel" on the table, for example, without specifying line, version and file, and then waxed poetic about their legal theories, and it probably would have worked. Why didn't they? They got cute? Or maybe they also don't know enough about software writing to grasp the difference between a novel and writing an operating system kernel.

8. IBM's argument that it asked for specifics about nonliteral infringement also ignores SCO's argument that it doesn't have to answer interrogatories until expert reports are due. Except that SCO knew, it has told us, that it would be arguing nonliteral infringement, so what it is saying here is that because it wasn't technically required to hand over that info until the last gasp of experts' reports, that is what it chose to do. But responding to interrogatories isn't so cute as all that. There is a running requirement to hand over information you have in hand. SCO can't really argue this both ways, that it just discovered it or developed it post the deadline and that it always knew it would be about nonliteral infringement. How would it know that, without some specifics? And if it had information about specifics, it had a duty to turn it over, not hold back until the last blooming minute possible.

9. The court orders were not clear. SCO makes a twisted argument by mistating the order, saying that the orders "did not clearly require SCO by December 2005 to have its experts finish their analyses of the material that SCO identified at that time as misappropriated". Which isn't what anybody has said. Nevertheless, SCO argues against the argument no one has made. In fact, IBM has said it isn't saying that, as even SCO acknowledges on page 5, but what it is saying is that the materials the experts could analyze had to be on that table. How was SCO supposed to know that it had to finish its experts analysis by December or which part of its experts' analyses it had to put on the table and which part it didn't need to? There were two deadlines, after all, one for allegedly infringed material and the other for expert reports, so how could SCO possibly figure out which was which? SCO could reasonably have thought it didn't have to tell it all until the second deadline. The problem with this argument is obvious -- the experts have not only further analyzed, they have expanded the case to include not only the entirety of the Linux kernel, from 326 lines of code on the table earlier, but they have introduced an entirely new theory of the case. That's not just further analysis, and it leaves IBM with no discovery having been conducted on any of the new materials that SCO was quietly keeping to itself or fell on after the deadline, depending on how gullible one chooses to be today. SCO's argument on this point ends with SCO saying that since it wasn't clear, you can't sanction us because we didn't get notice and notice is a requirement for a sanction to issue. SCO could have asked the judge for clarification, and it should have, if the orders were not clear.

10. SCO did obey the court's orders. It turned over all its list of allegedly misused materials. What it didn't turn over is "material in support of SCO's assertion that previously identified material was misused". There is a difference in SCO's Sophist's Universe. Here is the difference: IBM has argued that "allegedly misused material" means material that a party says has been misused. Au contraire! To SCO it means something entirely different, and if you can figure out what SCO is saying in that section, Section III on page 7, you win a prize.

That is where I gave up counting arguments, because none of them have the air of authenticity. That doesn't mean one of them might not work. The law is very much about process and procedure and dotting the i. If SCO can convince the court that an i got missed, it can perhaps prevail on a point. But only if the judge refuses to look at the big picture, and that is precisely what Judge Wells looked at: that, all sophistry aside, SCO didn't play fair in discovery, and it would prejudice IBM to let them get away with it.

Here's one part that puzzles me: SCO argues, in response to IBM's Addendum A, Copyright Principles, that one doesn't have to hold the copyright to bring a copyright infringement action. One can just be the exclusive licensee:

With respect to the purported law set forth in IBM's Addendum A, moreover, a sampling of the substantive propositions set forth therein shows important errors and oversights:
  • IBM incorrectly says (at no. 1) that a party cannot assert copyright infringement over materials that it does not own. Under the copyright laws, an exclusive licensee of such materials can assert such claims.

Well. Do they mean SCO is an exclusive licensee? If not, what is the relevance? I'd like very much to see SCO prove it is an exclusive licensee. Perhaps they don't mean to say that. But if so, do explain why SCO must pay Novell. And explain how IBM isn't a licensee. Now, exclusive licensees may be able to bring copyright infringement lawsuits, but surely not when the actual copyright holder is standing right there telling them to cut it out. Novell says it holds the copyrights, it waives the claim, and has a contractual right to so waive. At a minimum, SCO would have to show that Novell can't make it stop. And of course, to SCO, that may be the beauty of the argument: if it is actually making this claim it would force the judge to wait to decide this motion until after Novell is decided. But then again, it could be SCO just threw that in without meaning for it to apply to SCO. In any case, IBM doesn't get to respond to that. This is the last word on this subject, unless it gets permission to file a sur-sur-sur-reply.

And there is another point raised. SCO argues that at the time it put its allegedly misused list on the table, there were no external compatibility requirements of other programs that would make the materials on the list unprotectable. Whatever can they mean?

Here's my favorite part of SCO's filing:

IBM then makes (at 22) the grave accusation that SCO has acted in bad faith, but there is no evidence to support that assertion....

Snort. Wheeze. Choke. Passes out.

***********************************

Brent O. Hatch (5715)
HATCH, JAMES & DODGE, PC
[address]
[phone]
[fax]

David Boies (admitted pro hac vice)
Robert Silver (admitted pro hac vice)
Edward Normand (admitted pro hac vice)
BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER LLP
[address]
[phone]
[fax]

Devan V. Padmanabhan (admitted pro hac vice)
DORSEY & WHITNEY LLP
[address]
[phone]
[fax]

Stephen N. Zack (admitted pro hac vice)
BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER LLP
[address]
[phone]
[fax]

Stuart Singer (admitted pro hac vice)
BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER LLP
[address]
[phone]
[fax]

Attorneys for Plaintiff, The SCO Group, Inc.

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF UTAH

THE SCO GROUP, INC.

Plaintiff/Counterclaim-Defendant,

v.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
MACHINES CORPORATION,

Defendant/Counterclaim-Plaintiff.
SCO'S SUR-SURREPLY
MEMORANDUM IN FURTHER
SUPPORT OF ITS OBJECTIONS TO
THE MAGISTRATE JUDGE'S
ORDER ON IBM'S MOTION TO
CONFINE


Case No. 2:03CV0294DAK

Honorable Dale A. Kimball
Magistrate Judge Brooke C. Wells

(1)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES i
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 1
ARGUMENT 1
I. SCO WAS NOT OBLIGATED BY DECEMBER 2005 TO HAVE ITS EXPERTS FINISH THEIR ANALYSES OF THE MATERIAL THAT SCO IDENTIFIED AT THAT TIME AS MISAPPROPRIATED 2
II. THE COURT ORDERS DID NOT CLEARLY REQUIRE SCO BY DECEMBER 2005 TO HAVE ITS EXPERTS FINISH THEIR ANALYSES OF THE MATERIAL THAT SCO IDENTIFIED AT THAT TIME AS MISAPPROPRIATED 4
III. SCO HAD IDENTIFIED BY DECEMBER 2005 THE MATERIAL SCO ALLEGED TO BE MISAPPROPRIATED 7
A. IBM's Arguments Regarding IBM's Interpretation of the Word "Material" Do Not Provide Any Support for the Magistrate Judge's Order. 7
B. IBM's Arguments Regarding What Material SCO "Could Have" Identified in the December 2005 Submission Are Incorrect. 9
IV. IBM HAS NOT SUFFERED ANY "INCURABLE PREJUDICE" RESULTING FROM THE CONTENT OF SCO'S EXPERT REPORTS. 11
A. There Is No Substantiation for IBM's assertion of Prejudice. 12
B. The Record Belies IBM's Claim That SCO Spent "Years" Developing The Theory of Copyright Infringement in Dr. Cargill's Report. 15
C. IBM's Arguments Regarding the Work Necessary to Respond To Dr. Cargill's Analysis Continue to Lack Any Basis. 17

i (2)

V. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES AND GIVEN THE RECORD, THE EXCLUSION OF THE EVIDENCE AT ISSUE IN SCO'S EXPERT REPORTS IS INAPPROPRIATE. 20
CONCLUSION 23

ii (3)

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases
Baystate Technology, Inc. v. Bentley Systems, Inc.,
946 F. Supp. 1079 (D. Mass. 1996)
13
Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid,
490 U.S. 730 (1989)
13
Computer Assocs. Int'l, Inc. v. Altai, Inc.,
982 F.2d 693 (2d Cir. 1992)
21
Gates Rubber Co. v. Bando Chem. Indus. Ltd.,
9 F.3d 823 (10th Cir. 1993)
9, 21
Getaped.Com, Inc. v. Cangemi,
188 F. Supp. 2d 398 (S.D.N.Y. 2002)
14
Mitel, Inc. v. Iqtel, Inc.,
124 F.3d 1366 (10th Cir. 1997)
13
Mitel, Inc. v. Iqtel, Inc.,
896 F. Supp. 1050 (D. Colo. 1995)
13
Other Authorities
4 Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A][1][e] (2006) 21

(4)

Plaintiff, The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO"), respectfully submits this Sur-Surreply Memorandum in Further Support of its Objections to the Magistrate Judge's Order of December 21, 2006, granting the motion of Defendant, International Business Machines Corp. ("IBM"), to Confine SCO's Claims to, and Strike Allegations in Excess of, the Final Disclosures.

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

The parties have now argued back and forth, and back and forth, on the propriety of the Magistrate Judge's Order. IBM's latest volley confirms that neither IBM's arguments nor the record below support the severe sanction the Magistrate Judge imposed. The result would be the same even if, contrary to fact, IBM had spent the considerable length of its surreply brief fairly confronting the main arguments SCO has raised. IBM's efforts to avoid addressing the merits of the evidence in support of SCO's claims are apparent. In an effort at some brevity and to minimize further redundancy, SCO organizes this Memorandum around the findings that would be necessary to support the Magistrate Judge's Order, but that find no support in the record or the facts.

ARGUMENT

IBM does not dispute that, pursuant to this Court's Order dated November 29, 2006, the Court applies a de novo standard of review here. (SCO Reply at 2.) IBM's mistaken assertion (at 2) that the Magistrate Judge's Order "does not turn on a legal conclusion that is contrary to law" is consistent with IBM's failure to reconcile the inconsistency between the Order and the controlling copyright law. (SCO Reply at 7-8; see also Part III, below.)

(5)

I. SCO WAS NOT OBLIGATED BY DECEMBER 2005 TO HAVE ITS EXPERTS FINISH THEIR ANALYSES OF THE MATERIAL THAT SCO IDENTIFIED AT THAT TIME AS MISAPPROPRIATED.

The Magistrate Judge's Order confuses the obligation to disclose misused material with the accumulation of supporting evidence and with the theories of literal and non-literal infringement that are naturally found in expert reports, and are clearly allowed by the law in this Circuit. (SCO Reply at 3-10.)

IBM insists (at 3) that it has never argued "that the material at issue should be stricken because SCO failed to 'complete' its expert analyses in its Final Disclosures," but that is a straw man. SCO does not argue that IBM made such an express statement, only that the unavoidable substance and meaning of IBM's post hoc arguments and of the Magistrate Judge's Order was to create such a requirement.

In footnote 3, for example, IBM claims that "SCO inflates the volume of the listed material," contending that SCO's identification of JFS concerns only "10,374" lines of AIX code, rather than 160,000 lines. IBM's argument begs the question. A fundamental corollary to SCO's arguments in its Objections is that in identifying JFS in its December 2005 Submission as material that IBM has misused, SCO put at issue the approximately 160,000 lines of AIX code comprising JFS. IBM can argue otherwise only by presupposing that the Magistrate Judge's Order is correct.

Similarly, in footnote 4, IBM addresses SCO's discussion of the record evidence showing that IBM sponsored and the Magistrate Judge adopted a standard that goes well beyond this Court's requirement that SCO identify by December 2005 the material that IBM misused or misappropriated. Unable to deny the facts in the record regarding the breadth of the Magistrate

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Judge's Order, IBM insists that those facts "plainly relate to 'allegedly misused material'" and not other content in SCO's experts' reports. The argument not only brushes aside the parties' dispute regarding what constitutes such "allegedly misused material," but also ignores the revealing discussion in the record regarding the meaning and import of the Magistrate Judge's Order. SCO argues that the Magistrate Judge created a new and overly broad standard, illustrated by the Magistrate Judge's statement that if "it wasn't disclosed" by the deadline on December 22, 2005, "then it's out." There is nothing "plain" about that statement to support IBM's argument.

SCO has further demonstrated that where the premise of the Magistrate Judge's June 2006 Order and this Court's Order affirming it is the requirement that SCO provide "version, file and line" information about misused material, but where Tenth Circuit law makes clear that such information is not part of SCO's legal theory of copyright infringement, there is no sensible argument that the July 2005 Order required disclosures of such theories of non-literal infringement." (SCO Reply at 7-8.) It is true (as IBM says) that the July 2005 Order does not address non-literal infringement under the controlling law, but more to the point, the Magistrate Judge and IBM interpreted and applied this Court's July 2005 Scheduling Order in such a way that the Order could not have required SCO to disclose such theories by December 2005.

IBM confirms its failure to address the argument when it says (at 8) that SCO's failure to identify the non-literal elements of Dr. Cargill's analysis "at all" in December 2005 means that SCO's argument "falls flat." In response to SCO's demonstration that this Court's Order could not reasonably be read both to require SCO to identify all material by version, file and line coordinates and to identify the bases for non-literal information that cannot be identified by

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version, file and line coordinates under the controlling law, IBM thus argues: SCO should have identified the bases for non-literal infringement. If the argument makes no sense, it is because IBM immediately acknowledges (at 8) that the foundation for its argument is not this Court's July 2005 Order, but rather IBM interrogatories. SCO has already shown, however, that where the court has provided for a period of specific expert discovery, including expert reports and depositions, and interrogatories touch on expert issues, it is the specific period of expert discovery that serves as the means of interrogatory responses. (SCO Reply at 16.) IBM declines to address this argument, choosing instead (at 12-13) to attack the straw man that SCO supposedly reserves the right to identify additional evidence supporting its identification of allegedly misused material "by way of deposition designations or in its part of the final pretrial order." SCO has never made such an argument, and it does not follow from the controlling precedent that SCO has cited.

II. THE COURT ORDERS DID NOT CLEARLY REQUIRE SCO BY DECEMBER 2005 TO HAVE ITS EXPERTS FINISH THEIR ANALYSES OF THE MATERIAL THAT SCO IDENTIFIED AT THAT TIME AS MISAPPROPRIATED.

IBM continues to offer its various characterizations of what the July 2005 Scheduling Order required of SCO, and SCO has explained why the inferences upon which those characterizations are based are incorrect, but the main point remains that IBM cannot cite any language in any Order clearly, expressly, or unambiguously (let alone reasonably) requiring that all expert analysis of the legal theory of copyright infringement had to be included in the December 2005 Submission. (SCO Reply at 7-8.) The reasonable interpretation is to the contrary, because there were discrete dates for the December 2005 Submission and the May 2006 Expert Reports.

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In footnote 5, IBM illustrates two fundamental grounds for SCO's Objections in this area. IBM acknowledges that not all "expert analyses" had to be included in SCO's December 2005 Submission, but maintains that such analyses could only "support claims as to allegedly misused material and allegations of infringement identified with specificity" in those Disclosures. One, no matter how many times IBM argues to the contrary, there is no clear distinction between the content of "expert analyses" and the identification of "allegedly misused material"; there certainly is not a distinction sufficiently clear to warrant the severe sanction the Magistrate Judge imposed or to justify IBM's claims of bad faith and sandbagging on SCO's part. Two, in trying to argue otherwise, IBM has to resort to using language that does not appear in this Court's July 2005 Scheduling Order: nowhere does that Order say that SCO had to identify by December 2005 all facts and analyses in support of SCO's "allegations of infringement." That is IBM's language. IBM repeats the argument elsewhere in its surreply, arguing (at 7) without any citation to any Court Order that it was "perfectly clear" that SCO was obligated "to describe in detail its allegations and evidence of infringement." IBM thus underscores the post hoc requirement that SCO was supposedly obligated to detail by December 2005 the content of its experts' analyses of SCO's claims of infringement. The fact remains that there is no sensible argument that SCO could have known from the July 2005 Order — even if, contrary to fact and the evidence in the record, SCO had the completed expert analyses in hand — what part of an expert's Linux copyright analysis (for example) would have to be disclosed in December 2005 as opposed to in his expert report.

IBM's own attempt to illustrate SCO's supposed obligations illustrates the foregoing fundamental error in IBM's arguments. After announcing that the Court had made "perfectly

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clear" what SCO was obligated to do, IBM says (at 7-8) it follows that SCO was obligated "to explain in detail how, when and why IBM supposedly infringed SCO's alleged copyrights with respect to the allegedly misused material identified (e.g., by shipping it to customer x, or contributing the code to Linux file y)." Yet IBM makes this assertion without citation and no such language appears in the July 2005 Scheduling Order.

In then arguing (at 8) that SCO should have at least tried to disclose the non-literal elements of its legal theory of copyright infringement, IBM presupposes that its accusations of "bad faith" and "sandbagging" on SCO's part is truth — that SCO had the analysis of such elements in hand but decided not to disclose them, or that SCO thought it was supposed to have completed such analysis by December 2005 in the first place. And although IBM draws all the inferences in its favor, the fact that SCO did not try to describe the non-literal elements of its legal theory of copyright infringement by December 2005 equally allows the inference that SCO did not believe it was obligated to do so. As noted, moreover, to the extent IBM cross-references its interrogatories in making these arguments, SCO has demonstrated that where the court has provided for a period of specific expert discovery, including expert reports and depositions, and interrogatories touch on expert issues, it is the specific period of expert discovery that serves as the means of interrogatory responses. (SCO Reply at 16.)

IBM also continues to rely (at 24-26) on the Magistrate Judge's June 2006 Order, but that Order adds nothing to the core question of whether SCO's expert opinions, analyses and support constitute "misused material" within the meaning of the July 2005 Order, and of course the June 2006 Order could not have given SCO any notice of what material it supposedly was obligated to include in its December 2005 Submission. To the extent IBM argues that the June 2006 Order

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constitutes any support for what was supposedly required of SCO, that reliance ignores the fundamental requirement that a party in SCO's position have been put on notice of what the court order at issue required. (SCO Reply at 29-30.)

III. SCO HAD IDENTIFIED BY DECEMBER 2005 THE MATERIAL SCO ALLEGED TO BE MISAPPROPRIATED.

There is a distinction between "allegedly misused material" and "material in support of SCO's assertion that previously identified material was misused," and the Magistrate Judge's Order fails to acknowledge it. (SCO Reply at 6-7.)

A. IBM's Arguments Regarding IBM's Interpretation of the Word "Material" Do Not Provide Any Support for the Magistrate Judge's Order.

IBM accuses SCO (at 4) of "sophistry" and makes imaginative reference to Through the Looking Glass, but there is no substance to the accusation.

IBM first (at 4-5) re-orders the words in the July 2005 Scheduling Order and says that that "the term 'allegedly misused material' is simply material that a party contends has been misused." IBM uses as a supposed example of that tautology the fact that in its summary judgment papers SCO noted that it "alleges infringement of non-literal elements that pervade SVr4." The quotation does not say that any material in SVr4 constitutes allegedly misused material; it relates to SCO's legal theory under the copyright law that the more recent versions of Linux infringe on SCO's copyrights in SVr4. IBM argues in note 7 that Dr. Cargill's report "is replete with allegations of improper copying not mentioned in SCO's Final Disclosures," but that is merely IBM's label for part of Dr. Cargill's expert analysis of why Linux is substantially similar to SVr4.

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IBM then says (at 5): "If the material at issue were not 'allegedly misused material', then SCO would have no reason to object to the Order." This assertion is non-sensical: SCO has every reason to object to the Order by virtue of its exclusion of entire categories of SCO's experts analyses. For IBM to argue that the very existence of SCO's Objections supports IBM's opposition to those Objections is circular. In further contending (at 5) that SCO would not "have any reason to seek to amend its Final Disclosures" if the material at issue were not "allegedly misused material," IBM chooses to ignore the entire premise of the Motion to Amend — namely, that if the Court were to decide that the material at issue is "allegedly misused material," then SCO has demonstrated grounds for the amendment.

IBM then argues (at 5-6) that SCO's decision not to enter into a stipulation that IBM proposed is evidence that the excluded portions of the expert reports constituted "allegedly misused material" within the meaning of the July 2005 Order. The language of the first draft stipulation that IBM proposed (1) ambiguously adopted, in effect, IBM's argument that the reports of Mr. Rochkind and Dr. Ivie included "new material," and (2) declined to incorporate the questions surrounding Dr. Cargill's report at all, thus undermining the utility of the stipulation. IBM responded to SCO's efforts to cure such problems by proposing a stipulation that only reintroduced, into the language of the stipulation, the fundamental question of what SCO had or had not "specifically identified in SCO's Final Disclosures." These proposed stipulations would merely have insured a continued fight between the parties regarding what the stipulation meant in saying that SCO would not in the future "contend that such materials have been misused by IBM." Did IBM mean that SCO could not rely on the material in support of its expert analyses? That SCO could not separately cite such "material" for any purpose

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whatsoever? That such material could not constitute any part of SCO's theory of damages? Or that SCO just could not literally say to the Court or the jury that certain "material" has been "misused by IBM"? There were no clear answers to these questions forthcoming from IBM. What did become clear in the negotiations of the stipulation was the stipulation IBM was willing to sign would have created at least as many problems as it solved.

B. IBM's Arguments Regarding What Material SCO "Could Have" Identified in the December 2005 Submission Are Incorrect.

IBM insists (at 9) that SCO could have identified the non-literal elements of its analysis of Linux copyright infringement by source code coordinates, but in doing so fails to address SCO's showing since its Opening Memorandum (as at 12-14) that under the controlling Tenth Circuit analysis, IBM is wrong. Instead of addressing that case law, IBM points to evidence in the record merely confirming that the "source code" level of abstraction under the controlling law, see, e.g., Gates Rubber Co. v. Bando Chem. Indus. Ltd., 9 F.3d 823, 835 (10th Cir. 1993), is among the "necessary and reasonable evidence" for SCO to "support its claims and to oppose IBM's Tenth Counterclaim." There are of course multiple levels of abstraction under that test.

IBM claims (at 9-10) that "SCO acknowledged that the material subject to any allegation of infringement can be identified by version, file and line information, regardless of whether the alleged infringement is said to be line-by-line literal infringement or non-literal infringement." For support, IBM points (at 10) to SCO's statements from 2004 indicating that it would engage in a line-by-line analysis of UNIX and Linux to in order to "obtain all necessary and reasonable evidence to support is claims." This statement has nothing to do with whether infringed non-literal elements can be identified by pointing to version, file, and line number. Rather, SCO

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stated that a comprehensive analysis would be necessary to obtain as much evidence of infringement as possible and determine the scope of its copyright infringement claims.

IBM further argues (at 10) that Dr. Cargill "actually discussed some of the non-literal elements at issue by version, file and line information," and refers to segments of source code included in Dr. Cargill's report. IBM misunderstands Dr. Cargill's references to literal source code. IBM cites to a portion of Dr. Cargill's first report in which Dr. Cargill refers to segments of ELF-related source code as evidence that Linux uses and incorporates the non-literal ELF material, not as identification of the infringed non-literal ELF material itself. The ELF-related source code at issue is equivalent to a sign saying "this system uses the non-literal ELF material at issue," but does not actually constitute the non-literal material at issue. IBM further quotes Dr. Cargill as stating "[t]he chosen names are associated with the numbers by expressing the arrangement in source code header files," where IBM apparently intends to imply that this "arrangement" is the "arrangement" of elements within UNIX as a whole that is copied in the Linux operating system. Rather, as shown by the context of Dr. Cargill's report surrounding this quoted sentence, the "arrangement" discussed by Dr. Cargill is merely the association of values with signal names expressed within a header file. Notably, the source code referenced in this section of Dr. Cargill's report was included in SCO's December 2005 Submission. (Item 184 of the Submission.) The fact that arrangement of source code within a single header file can be shown by reference to such source code is irrelevant to whether the selection, coordination, and arrangement of various elements within the UNIX operating system as a whole can be shown by pointing to literal bits of source code. IBM's effort (at 10-11) to analogize the issues presented here with the question of identifying methods and concepts at issue in a previous motion is thus

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unfounded, where the controlling Tenth Circuit law regarding the non-literal aspects of the analysis of copyright infringement was not at issue in the prior briefing. In that plain sense, SCO's arguments here are not the "attack" on the Court's November 2006 Order that IBM (at 11 n.15) makes them out to be. (See also Part IV, below.)

IBM goes on (at 12-13) to accuse SCO of inconsistent arguments with respect to the excluded material in the reports of Evan Ivie and Marc Rochkind, but IBM misapprehends SCO's argument. SCO has explained that the excluded material is supporting material that provides additional bases to support SCO's allegation that the material SCO clearly identified in the December Submission, such as JFS and the Testing Suites, was in fact misused. As SCO made clear with respect to JFS, for example, SCO satisfied the Court Orders by identifying all of JFS in Item I of the December 2005 Submission, and then "went beyond that identification to provide the information it had at that time to support the point that JFS was derived from UNIX System V." (SCO Reply at 10 (emphasis added).) The supporting evidence demonstrating that JFS is a derivative does not reasonably constitute "allegedly misused material."

IV. IBM HAS NOT SUFFERED ANY "INCURABLE PREJUDICE" RESULTING FROM THE CONTENT OF SCO'S EXPERT REPORTS.

IBM's assertion of "incurable prejudice" continues to lack foundation, including where IBM failed to substantiate the assertion, IBM now seeks time and discovery constituting a windfall for IBM, and IBM could have avoided the asserted prejudice, and because with respect to Dr. Cargill's analysis in particular. (SCO Reply at 14-17.) IBM does not refute these points. Instead, in seeking an extra year to analyze SCO's experts reports, IBM seeks a post hoc revision to the scheduling order that amounts to a windfall for IBM.

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A. There Is No Substantiation for IBM's assertion of Prejudice.

IBM previously said that SCO's evidence was disclosed six months after the close of fact discovery, but made no effort to explain or illustrate any particular "fact discovery" it supposedly needed to analyze any of the evidence at issue. IBM also argued that the evidence was disclosed "simultaneous with the filing of initial expert reports, on the eve of the due date of IBM's opposing expert reports," but made no effort to show that its experts tried but could not respond to SCO's evidence or to substantiate its claim that the experts could not have analyzed the evidence in a matter of weeks. (SCO Reply at 14.) IBM now says that Addendum A identifies the discovery IBM would have taken, but IBM did not even undertake such discovery with respect to the material SCO identified in its December Submission. IBM also has no answer to the fact under the July 2005 Order on which the Magistrate Court's Order turns, IBM would have had only three months of fact discovery following the December Submission, not a year. Nor has IBM substantiated its newly minted reliance on the list of questions in Addendum A. The IBM expert offers nothing more than the conclusory statement (at 18) that "substantial time and effort would be required to fully evaluate the new material that Dr. Cargill identifies as misused." The statement is practically meaningless; the expert could mean that he could finish such work in a month. IBM is thus left with making the same conclusory assertions, such as its statement that it is "plain" that reviewing "all of the files in Linux" — which, as shown below, is not something IBM would even have to undertake to do — "would require a very long time."1

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With respect to the purported law set forth in IBM's Addendum A, moreover, a sampling of the substantive propositions set forth therein shows important errors and oversights:

  • IBM incorrectly says (at no. 1) that a party cannot assert copyright infringement over materials that it does not own. Under the copyright laws, an exclusive licensee of such materials can assert such claims.

  • IBM incorrectly says (at no. 2) that the plaintiff bears the burden of showing it is the author of the copyrighted material. The plaintiff need show only that it owns or is the exclusive licensee of the copyrighted material. The case IBM cites, Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 737 (1989), does not make any pronouncement regarding the burden a plaintiff must meet to establish infringement.

  • IBM says (at no. 3) that a defendant does not infringe if it has a valid license to exercise those rights are claimed to be infringing, but SCO has already shown that the licenses IBM claims to have are not valid and/or do not cover IBM's Linux activities.

  • IBM cites (at no. 5) Mitel, Inc. v. Iqtel, Inc., 896 F. Supp. 1050, 1055 (D. Colo. 1995), for the proposition that material that is a procedure, process, system or method of operation is unprotectable, but the Tenth Circuit in Mitel, Inc. v. Iqtel, Inc., 124 F.3d 1366 (10th Cir. 1997), overturned the proposition that literal expression could be deemed an unprotectable "procedure, process, system or method of operation."

  • IBM cites (at no. 8) Baystate Technology, Inc. v. Bentley Systems, Inc., 946 F. Supp. 1079, 1087-88 (D. Mass. 1996), for the proposition that material that can be expressed in only a limited number of ways is unprotectable, but Baystate relied for

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    that proposition on a First Circuit opinion that the Tenth Circuit expressly rejected in the Mitel case.

  • IBM says (at no. 9; see also nos. 10, 11, 12 & 13) that material that is dictated by the compatibility requirements of other programs with which it is designed to interact is unprotectable, but IBM has put forth no evidence of such external constraints at the time the infringed material that SCO has identified (including its December 2005 Submission), whereas SCO has put forth substantial evidence that there were no such external constraints.

  • IBM cites (at no. 16) Getaped.Com, Inc. v. Cangemi, 188 F. Supp. 2d 398, 404 (S.D.N.Y. 2002), that to claim non-statutory damages for copyright infringement, a plaintiff must show that it was injured by the alleged infringement, but that case refers to disgorgement of defendant's profits attributable to the infringement as "non-statutory" damages, and does not indicate that a showing of actual harm is necessary to obtain disgorgement of defendant's profits.

The foregoing examples alone demonstrate that IBM's reliance on the Addendum is no basis for its arguments against SCO's Objections.

IBM also previously said that the evidence at issue was disclosed "when summary judgment briefs were forthcoming," but SCO pointed out that it produced its initial expert reports four months before those motions were due, and IBM never asked to delay their filing. (SCO Reply at 14.) In response, IBM offers (at 18-19) an explanation for why it chose not to seek more time to file those motions, but that is not the point. The point, which IBM does not and cannot deny, is that it had four months in which to analyze and try to refute the material in

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SCO's expert reports prior to filing its motions. There can be no "incurable" prejudice where IBM had the time to address the material at issue but deliberately chose not to do so.

B. The Record Belies IBM's Claim That SCO Spent "Years" Developing The Theory of Copyright Infringement in Dr. Cargill's Report.

IBM also previously said that "SCO had spent more than three years developing its theory of infringement," but the record does not support that assertion with respect to Dr. Cargill's opinions in particular. The record shows that as of early 2005, SCO did not even regard itself as having brought a copyright claim in this case. (See, e.g., SCO's Opening Mem. at 18.) IBM now says (at 19) the proof that SCO spent three years developing that theory is "a plethora of public statements since 2003 regarding its claim that Linux infringes SCO's copyrights." The statements at issue in the articles that IBM cites do not support IBM's argument with respect to Dr. Cargill's work, and in several instances directly refute IBM's argument:

  • Ex. 368. This article confirms the view of SCO CEO Darl McBride as of June 2, 2003, that SCO's pending claims did not concern the issue of copyright violation: "McBride said SCO's claims center on its contracts giving companies the right to build Unix software, and not on copyrights or patents. 'That has zero percent to do with any current claims that we have in the marketplace,' he said. (Emphasis added.)

  • Ex. 478. This article from the same date as Exhibit 368 quotes Mr. Sontag referring to the code that SCO had identified, drawing a plain distinction between code constituting "a direct copyright violation" and the code underlying SCO's contract claims, and stating that the "large blocks of code" in SCO's hands at that time related

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    to the contract claims. Responding to the question "How many lines of code in the Linux kernel are a direct copyright violation?," Mr. Sontag is quoted: "It's very extensive. It is many different sections of code ranging from 5 to 10 to 15 lines of code in multiple places that are of issue, up to large blocks of code that have been inappropriately copied into Linux in violation of our source-code licensing contract." (Emphasis added.)

  • Ex. 480. This article from July 2003 quotes Mr. McBride as referring to "how much code is infringing" in Linux in the context of the IBM lawsuit, and thus plainly refers to SCO's contract claims, not any theory of copyright infringement with respect to a claim that SCO had not even brought.

  • Ex. 367. This article quotes Mr. McBride as stating in August 2003 that SCO's experts "have found already a mountain of code" and that the "DNA of Linux is coming from Unix." Later in the article, SCO vice-president Chris Sontag makes clear that Mr. McBride's reference to "Unix" encompasses the material in the UNIX-derivative works that are the basis for SCO's contract claims: "Sontag also said thousands of lines of Unix have made their way into Linux in the form of derivative works that should have been bound by SCO licensing agreements that require licensees to keep the code secret," and the article refers to "829,000" lines of such code in the form of SMP.

  • Ex. 383. This article from three days after Exhibit 367 refers to same substantial volume of code referenced in that article, and thus again refers to code underlying SCO's contract claims, not any copyright claim.

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  • Ex. 372. This article from two weeks after Exhibit 367 refers exclusively to SCO's "trade secrets-reach of contract suit against IBM" and thus plainly refers back to the contract claims in referencing SCO's "claim that IBM misappropriated IP from the Unix operating system that SCO now owns and put it in Linux."

  • Ex. 479. This article from the same day as Exhibit 372 references Mr. McBride's understanding that there was Unix System 5 code "showing up directly inside of Linux" and then repeatedly quotes him as explaining that SCO's claims against IBM were contract claims and as stating expressly that his surprise at IBM's and Novell's cooperation because "we didn't have any copyright claims in our case with IBM" and "when we filed against IBM, we chose to not even talk about copyrights."

The foregoing record thus makes clear that SCO did not spend more than three years developing Dr. Cargill's theory of infringement. Indeed, Dr. Cargill testified at deposition that he had spent only approximately 400-500 hours writing all three of his expert reports. The record thus puts the lie to IBM's repeated assertion that Dr. Cargill's expert opinion on substantial similarity "reinvents" SCO's case from what it was in 2003, 2004, or 2005. It should be self-evident (as IBM says) that where SCO spent only months developing the analysis of substantial similarity at issue, it would have required IBM and its experts only months to respond.

C. IBM's Arguments Regarding the Work Necessary to Respond To Dr. Cargill's Analysis Continue to Lack Any Basis.

IBM has argued that Dr. Cargill's legal analysis requires "line-by-line analysis," but SCO pointed out that Dr. Cargill's report and the controlling Tenth Circuit law make clear that no such analysis is even appropriate, let alone required. (SCO Reply at 14.) In pressing the

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argument, IBM misapprehends SCO's theory and the relevant law, and ignores the nature of the work its own experts have already undertaken. SCO addresses this assertion in detail in its suresurreply memorandum in support of its Motion to Amend. Suffice it to say here that where IBM now leans heavily on a parade of horribles regarding the work supposedly required, IBM's own experts did not undertake the file-by-file analysis that IBM now says would be necessary work to try to rebut SCO's theory.

IBM also previously said that SCO's claim of Linux infringement was a "newly minted allegation" as to which IBM was forced to proceed "without the benefit of discovery," but IBM regarded SCO as having brought a claim that Linux is substantially similar to UNIX System V under the copyright laws. (SCO Reply at 14-15.) IBM admits this fact (at 20-21), and in continuing to take issue with the timing of Dr. Cargill's analysis only repeats the logical errors inherent in its underlying Motion and the Magistrate Court's Order. In arguing (at 21 & n.21) that SCO had been ordered to "disclose its evidence" and could not "properly omit that material from its Final Disclosures," IBM again presupposes that as of December 2005, SCO had the details of Dr. Cargill's non-literal theory of copyright infringement prepared and ready for distribution. It did not. In this sense again, IBM's position thus reduces to the position that SCO was obligated to have had its experts complete such copyright work by December 2005, and that the July 2005 Order made clear that SCO would have to complete that work by that time. SCO has repeatedly shown in detail how neither of those positions is correct or forms a legitimate basis for the Magistrate Court's Order.

IBM also now tries to disclaim any intent to obtain the windfall that its request for an additional year of discovery would constitute. IBM says at bottom (at 22) that it based its

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request for three months of post-December 2005 Submission discovery on the grounds that when IBM sought the deadlines that were embodied in the July 2005 Order, "SCO had disclosed absolutely no evidence of infringement by Linux." The argument ignores the fact that as of early 2005, SCO did not believe it had even brought a claim turning on "infringement by Linux." IBM's implication of sandbagging and intentional disregard of Court Orders (as a 22 & n.22) is wrong. And the record shows that IBM's request for three months of fact discovery following the December 2005 Submission, and six months of expert work following that, were reasonable estimates of time IBM would need to respond to all of SCO's evidence and theories of infringement. For IBM to respond to the Linux copyright analysis would take only part of that time — a few months, not a year.

IBM finally continues to avoid the meaning and substance of the nine cases SCO cited demonstrating that IBM's opportunity to depose SCO's experts on the material at issue defeats the argument that IBM has suffered prejudice sufficient to justify the exclusion of that material. IBM says only (at 23) that those cases are different because they involve different facts. But if it could, IBM would actually analyze the holdings in these cases and distinguish them. It is not responsive to this doctrine for IBM to say that its view at the time was that "SCO was not permitted to challenge this new material." At issue in the cited precedent is not the requirement of any court order, but rather whether the party could have avoided the prejudice it now claims to suffer. The fact is that the cases reflect a well-established and well-reasoned proposition that independently defeats the claim of "incurable prejudice" that IBM tries to bootstrap onto its express decision not to ask SCO's experts about information that IBM and its experts had had months to analyze and try to refute.

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V. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES AND GIVEN THE RECORD, THE EXCLUSION OF THE EVIDENCE AT ISSUE IN SCO'S EXPERT REPORTS IS INAPPROPRIATE.

IBM's continued argument that SCO has "waived" its arguments regarding "substantial justification" under Rule 37 reveals the extent of IBM's reluctance to address the merits of the argument. And the gist of IBM's "waiver" argument is confounding. IBM does not dispute that SCO addressed all the elements of the "substantial justification" analysis before the Magistrate Court. (SCO Reply at 11-12.) Instead, IBM complains (at 16-17) that SCO did so, in part, in a footnote. If this Court need not acknowledge arguments presented in footnotes, then it is not at all clear how IBM proposes the Court should treat the thirty-three footnotes in IBM's latest brief purporting to tackle several of SCO's arguments on the merits, or IBM's argument (at 16 n.18) that "any additional delay in these proceedings would have been prejudicial to IBM," which is an argument IBM makes in a footnote.2

IBM's secondary attempts to respond to the merits of SCO's arguments regarding its "substantial justification" are similarly unavailing. IBM ignores SCO's primary argument, which is that SCO "had reasonably concluded that the analyses and supporting evidence that have been excluded were appropriately included in the expert reports, and that there was at the very least a genuine dispute between the parties on that question." (SCO Reply at 12-13.) SCO expounded on that point in its Reply Brief by explaining that "among the fundamental questions at issue is whether the material the Magistrate Judge has excluded actually qualifies as such material" (id. at 13), and reiterating its view that it does not. IBM remains unable to cite any

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authority for the proposition that where the parties have a genuine dispute regarding the meaning of the court order at issue, the failure of one party to comply with the order as ultimately interpreted merits sanctions, let alone the drastic sanction the Magistrate Judge imposed.

IBM then argues (at 14-15) that there can be no contrast between the Linux material identified in SCO's December Submission and Dr. Cargill's analysis in his expert report, because an expert in Dr. Cargill's position is not even permitted to undertake such a non-literal analysis of substantial similarity, and that the elements of Dr. Cargill's analysis are no different than the "methods and concepts" at issue in IBM's prior motion to limit SCO's claims. This argument is central to IBM's brief, and it is wrong. The leading treatise on copyright law recommends the consideration of expert testimony "to determine substantial similarity of computer programs." 4 Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A][1][e], at 13-152 (2006). The treatise makes clear that its use of the term "substantial similarity" in the foregoing section refers to "actionable copying as a legal proposition." Id. § 13.03[A], at 13.34.1. In addition, the Tenth Circuit has held the following:

  • "Once [facts] are gathered and expert testimony is heard, the court can then analyze which portions of the program according to the expert testimony, infringes the protected expression." Gates Rubber, 9 F.3d at 833 n.7.

  • "Indeed, in most cases we foresee that the use of experts will provide substantial guidance to the court in applying an abstractions test." Id. at 834-35.

  • "Ordinarily, expert testimony will be helpful to organize a particular program into various levels of abstraction." Id. at 835.

See also Computer Assocs. Int'l, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., 982 F.2d 693, 712-23 (2d Cir. 1992) (accepting and approving expert testimony on the issue of substantial similarity and copying and whether such copying is actionable or illicit). IBM's misapprehension of this controlling law is

21 (25)

crucial not only because it reveals IBM's error in claiming impropriety in Dr. Cargill's analysis, but also — and more to the point for these Objections — it underscores that SCO had reasonably concluded that such analysis for its experts, not for the December 2005 Submission.

IBM then makes (at 22) the grave accusation that SCO has acted in bad faith, but there is no evidence to support that assertion, the Magistrate Judge did not cite any, and SCO clearly argued below that the Magistrate Judge was obligated to consider whether any such evidence existed. (SCO Reply at 6-7, 11-12; see also Part II, above.) The main premise of IBM's argument — that SCO had evidence in hand as of December 2005 that it decided not to disclose — finds no support anywhere, including in any of the depositions of SCO's experts. The apparent secondary premise of the argument — that SCO supposedly thought it might have to disclose more than it did in December 2005 and so waited to have its experts address certain issues until early 2006 — also lacks any foundation. The language of the Orders at issue did not put SCO on notice that it had to identify by December 2005 the entire sum of evidence supporting IBM's misuse of the material identified in the December 2005 Submission.

IBM finally insists — in a footnote (at 22 n.22) — that its claim of "litigation by ambush" and of the "flouting of discovery deadlines" supports IBM's claim of prejudice, but misapprehends SCO's point. IBM does not establish any prejudice merely by using such heated language to describe the disclosure of analyses that SCO reasonably believed was timely disclosed, that SCO continues to believe was timely disclosed, and that IBM had every opportunity to address itself and to have its expert address.

22 (26)

CONCLUSION

SCO respectfully submits, for the reasons stated above and in SCO's previous memoranda, that the Court should reverse the Magistrate Judge's Order and permit SCO to proceed with all theories of liability disclosed in its expert reports, including copyright infringement based on both literal and non-literal elements of the copyrighted works as well as the selection, arrangement, and coordination of elements in the copyrighted works.

DATED this 11th day of May, 2007.

HATCH, JAMES & DODGE, P.C.
Brent O. Hatch
Mark F. James

BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER LLP

David Boies
Robert Silver
Stuart H. Singer
Stephen N. Zack
Edward Normand

DORSEY & WHITNEY LLP
Devan V. Padmanabhan

Counsel for The SCO Group, Inc.

By: ___/s/ Edward Normand___________

23 (27)

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

Plaintiff, The SCO Group, Inc., hereby certifies that a true and correct copy of the foregoing SCO's Sur-Surreply Memorandum in Further Support of its Objections to the Magistrate Judge's Order on IBM's Motion to Confine was served on Defendant, International Business Machines Corporation, on this 11th day of May, 2007, via CM/ECF to the following:

David Marriott, Esq. ([email address])
Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP
[address]

Todd Shaughnessy, Esq. ([email address])
Snell & Wilmer LLP
[address]

/s/ Edward Normand

(28)

1 IBM draws (at 18) a false comparison between the time SCO estimated it would take the company to identify all of the UNIX technology in Linux and the time it would take IBM to analyze such UNIX material once SCO had done the work of identifying it. By definition the second task is only a subset of the first one, and it involves only a tiny fraction of the code at issue in the first task. As discussed more thoroughly in SCO's Sur-Surreply Memorandum in support of its Motion to Amend, IBM's repeated assertion that SCO's expert reports implicate "every file in Linux," and that IBM would therefore have to analyze "every file in Linux," are simply false.
2 Contrary to IBM's suggestion (at 13 n.16), SCO does not argue that IBM invoked "Rule 37" for the first time in oral argument, and does not dispute that IBM cited that Rule (among several others) in its underlying motion itself. The fact is that IBM's memorandum in support of that motion does not clearly rely on or enumerate the relevant factors bearing on a sanction under Rule 37. (SCO Reply at 11-12.)

  


SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order to Confine, as text | 195 comments | Create New Account
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When is this going to be over? Re: SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order
Authored by: martimus on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 12:26 PM EDT

Lately everything we read seems to be the "Last Nail In The Coffin" for TSCOG, and yet the legal motions keep coming and coming and coming. When will it be over already?

---
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: Billions for defense, but not one cent for dhimmitude.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections Here
Authored by: feldegast on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 12:29 PM EDT
So PJ can fix them

---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2007 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl's open letter from September 2003
Authored by: IMANAL on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 12:47 PM EDT
Here is a brief excerpt from Darl McBride's long open letter from September 2003, from before he stopped talk to the public about that case. This letter was published by The Register on September 12, 2003:

"If the Open Source community wants to develop products for enterprise corporations, it must respect and follow the rule of law. These rules include contracts, copyrights and other intellectual property laws. For several months SCO has been involved in a contentious legal case that we filed against IBM. What are the underlying intellectual property principles that have put SCO in a strong position in this hotly debated legal case? I'd summarize them in this way:

* "Fair use" applies to educational, public service and related applications and does not justify commercial misappropriation. Books and Internet sites intended and authorized for the purpose of teaching and other non-commercial use cannot be copied for commercial use. We believe that some of the SCO software code that has ended up in the Linux operating system got there through this route. This violates our intellectual property rights.
* Copyright attributions protect ownership and attribution rights - they cannot simply be changed or stripped away. This is how copyright owners maintain control of their legal rights and prevent unauthorized transfer of ownership. Our proprietary software code has been copied into Linux by people who simply stripped off SCO's copyright notice or contributed derivative works in violation of our intellectual property rights. This is improper.
* In copyright law, ownership cannot be transferred without express, written authority of a copyright holder. Some have claimed that, because SCO software code was present in software distributed under the GPL, SCO has forfeited its rights to this code. Not so - SCO never gave permission, or granted rights, for this to happen.
* Transfer of copyright ownership without express written authority of all proper parties is null and void.
* Use of derivative rights in copyrighted material is defined by the scope of a license grant. An authorized derivative work may not be used beyond the scope of a license grant. License grants regarding derivative works vary from license to license - some are broad and some are narrow. In other words, the license itself defines the scope of permissive use, and licensees agree to be bound by that definition. One reason SCO sued IBM is due to our assertions that IBM has violated the terms of the specific IBM/SCO license agreement through its handling of derivative works. We believe our evidence is compelling on this issue.

The copyright rules that underlie SCO's case are not disputable. They provide a solid foundation for any software development model, including Open Source. Rather than ignore or challenge copyright laws, Open Source developers will advance their cause by respecting the rules of law that built our society into what it is today. This is the primary path towards giving enterprise companies the assurance they need to accept Open Source products at the core of their business infrastructure. Customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable.
"



So, if that does not hint at copyright issues I don't know what does.







---
--------------------------
IM Absolutely Not A Lawyer

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic Here
Authored by: mhoyes on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 12:51 PM EDT
And please make the clicky thingies.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Response to as PJ numbers it #9. The court orders were not clear.
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 01:25 PM EDT
Um SCO might want to review the hearing trainscripts especially: http://www.groklaw.net/p df/Hearing-Oct7-2005.pdf

Becasue I'm sure Judge Wells will and if she some what remembers that she told SCO (in fact verbally ordered SCO) that they should seek clarification from teh court if they felt court orders were un-clear, she'll be remembering correctly. Now is ignoring the Judge's insctructions to seek clarification if there is any questions about it's orders isn't willfull I don't know what is.

J "Isnala"

IANAL, comments my own and coyprighted under CC and assigned to PJ

[ Reply to This | # ]

Vanilla Ice case - my first reaction is that Darl's wrong
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 01:43 PM EDT
Do we have that case available anywhere?

My first reaction is that Darl misrepresents the Vanilla Ice case.

Music can be written too, and I'm suspecting in that case, the notes matched up
appropriately with the original material.

I would bet there was no vague "this idea taken from here" ...
"this idea that cannot be discussed using language" (which is what
Darl would like).

And that other cases (Gates Rubber?) make that inapplicable to computer
programs.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order to Confine, as text
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 01:46 PM EDT
I don't know if this is attributable to the appearance of David Boies, but this
memo is, by far and above, the most unreadable, obtuse, syntactically obscure
filing in the entire case.

I was exhausted by the 2nd page trying to parse out the sentences. And I am a
lawyer, so I'm familiar with parsing argumentative prose -- but this is utterly
ridiculous.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I get the distinct feeling SCO is writing deliberate nonsensical gibberish
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 01:55 PM EDT
in the hopes the court will read some meaning into the non-sensical scribbling
and decide for SCO.

BIFF does similar things on y!, and lots of posters make the mistake of trying
to parse out the chicken entrails, wasting their own time to absolutely no end.

This may be, in fact, what motivates BIFF - the Darl-ish thinking (made clear by
the book of clippings) that someone, somewhere is wasting their time to
absolutely no end, just because you took 10 seconds to spew garbage on the
Internet.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The money tree
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 02:16 PM EDT

-----------------
"The purpose of all the arguments is just to make IBM have to spend money
to pay its lawyers to answer each argument."
-----------------

IBM will get its legal expenses back from Boies? Boies will gets its damages
paid out reimbursed from Microsoft?

Sounds like a plan.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • So far, only SCO - Authored by: stites on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 02:53 PM EDT
    • Yet. - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 08:55 PM EDT
The Rights of An Exclusive Licensee to Bring an Action
Authored by: sk43 on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 02:43 PM EDT
From the Copyright Act, Section 501:

"(b) The legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive right under a copyright
is entitled, subject to the requirements of section 411, to institute an action
for any infringement of that particular right committed while he or she is the
owner of it. The court may require such owner to serve written notice of the
action with a copy of the complaint upon any person shown, by the records of the
Copyright Office or otherwise, to have or claim an interest in the copyright,
and shall require that such notice be served upon any person whose interest is
likely to be affected by a decision in the case. The court may require the
joinder, and shall permit the intervention, of any person having or claiming an
interest in the copyright."

The way I read this is that if SCO has the exclusive right to license UNIX or
UnixWare code to others, then it can file a lawsuit against a potential
infringer, but may be required to notify Novell and join Novell into such
action. I am sure they would work great together.

For the record, the exclusive rights are defined in Section 106 of the Copyright
Act. (Google for Title 17 - it is hosted on numerous websites.)

The fact that SCO even raises the issue of exclusive licenses would seem to
imply that they are admitting that they may well lose against Novell.

[ Reply to This | # ]

...last *blooming* minute possible...
Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 03:36 PM EDT
I think this farce is getting to us all.
Even PJ's tolerance is wearing thin ;)



---
Ubuntu is like a breath of fresh air.
Free yourself
Year1 Use foss apps as replacements ff tb ooo
Year2 Ubuntu dual boot
Ubuntu user as of 181206

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order to Confine, as text
Authored by: jbeadle on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 03:47 PM EDT
With registration of its Unix copyrights, SCO now has broad legal rights against end users with respect to infringing use of the Linux 2.4 kernel release and any future release of the Linux 2.6 kernel.

However, we intend to use these rights carefully and judiciously. In the past weeks, many Linux users have asked us how they can immediately resolve issues with Linux without litigation. This is clearly the path SCO prefers to take in resolving its issues with end users of Linux. Therefore as a viable alternative to legal enforcement against Linux end users, SCO is prepared to offer a license for SCO's UnixWare 713 product for use in conjunction with any Linux offering. Specifically, SCO will hold its licensees harmless and will covenant not to sue such licensees for running Linux in binary format on any CPU licensed under a valid SCO UnixWare 713 license. This licensing format will assure that Linux users are able to run Linux in full compliance with SCO's underlying intellectual property rights....

Man, does this sound like M$/Novell, or what??

-jb

[ Reply to This | # ]

Perjury?
Authored by: JamesK on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 04:16 PM EDT
When does perjury kick in??? They seem to be arguing the black in their
previous filings is actually white.


---
Be sincere, even if you have to fake it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order to Confine, as text
Authored by: Eric Damron on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 04:21 PM EDT
"IBM then makes (at 22) the grave accusation that SCO has acted in bad
faith, but there is no evidence to support that assertion...."

What a hoot! Didn't the Judge say that their actions were "willful?"


Are they calling the Judge a liar or just saying that the Judge got confused,
again?

I must admit that I'm growing tired and angry. It is time that SCO got crushed
and justice got served... cold.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Please stop ruining our case
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 04:34 PM EDT
Ms Pamela Jones,

Please stop digging up evidence and please stop ruining our case, you're
limiting the amount of millions we can scam... er... I mean, profit... from the
sales of our shares.

Yours truly,

Darl McBride
PS - for all those living in an alternate universe, this is a joke

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order to Confine, as text
Authored by: dmarker on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 05:56 PM EDT
The aspect of their theory that says Linux copies in a non literal way, their
ideas and concepts is arrogant.

It assumes that Unix Sys V never copied in a non literal way from other
operating systems !.

Also, if someone wanted to take this line of reasoning to a further extreme
(like tSCOg have done), then any operating system that does the same things as
another may be guilty of borrowing methods & concepts.

So all along it was tSCOg's theory plus their opportunism in attempting to
exploit it. But they harmed Linux and IBM's business along the way. Then got
caught out when it became clear they never had the copyrights & that Unix
had been openly published and had no secrets & in fact has clearly borrowed
much from others (for 1 - BSD).

D Marker

[ Reply to This | # ]

Straw, straw and more straw
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 06:26 PM EDT
"...IBM insists (at 3) that it has never argued "that the material at
issue should be stricken because SCO failed to 'complete' its expert analyses in
its Final Disclosures," but that is a straw man."

That is hilarious, since the very argument IBM is rebutting (and which SCO is
redundantly re-restating here) is the very definition of a classic straw man.
And this whole sur-surwhatever is simply piling on more straw.

I cannot find anywhere in this document where SCO actually addresses ANY of the
issues or rebuttals IBM makes. Every paragraph relies a word or phrase taken
out of context from IBM's reply, construed in a completely illogical manner,
then proceeds to argue against that misconstruction.

They are attempting to buffer their straw man with an army of straw toy
soldiers, using already rotten and crumbling straw recycled from their
previously failed motion.

What Kimball needs here is the legal equivalent of a match!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Exclusive Licensee
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 07:02 PM EDT
Um, is not SCO's position here that it is the exclusive licensee of the
magically fuzzy copyrights in direct contradiction to its position in the Novell
lawsuit that SCO is indeed the holder of the copyrights.

How does SCO get to play both sides of that boat?

[ Reply to This | # ]

They left one out....
Authored by: mrcreosote on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 08:26 PM EDT
'The dog ate my homework'

---
----------
mrcreosote

[ Reply to This | # ]

Exclusive Licensee
Authored by: Jude on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 08:39 PM EDT
Legal question:

Suppose I wrote a play, and I granted the exclusive right to perform the play to
theater company A. If another theater company B begins giving unauthorized
performances of the play, who has standing to sue B for copyright infrigement:
Me or A?

[ Reply to This | # ]

External compatibility
Authored by: inode_buddha on Sunday, May 13 2007 @ 10:18 PM EDT
Sounds like POSIX to me, what other standards would apply?

---
-inode_buddha
Copyright info in bio

"When we speak of free software,
we are referring to freedom, not price"
-- Richard M. Stallman

[ Reply to This | # ]

    If IBM points out these things to the court, I see SCO then telling the court
    Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 14 2007 @ 09:35 AM EDT
    "see, we told IBM all about our allegations long ago.

    Darl told IBM.

    Sontag told IBM.

    IBM has nothing to complain about if Cargill is included.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    color me surprised
    Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 14 2007 @ 01:01 PM EDT
    IBM requested that SCO stipulte, that SCO give up the right to use the specific
    code Cargill implicates.

    that SCO never mentions that they refused to stipulate surprises me.

    NAAAAAWWWT.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    SCO's Sur-Surreply re: Objections to the Magistrate's Order to Confine, as text
    Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 14 2007 @ 03:22 PM EDT
    "Dr. Cargill refers to segments of ELF-related source code as evidence that
    Linux uses and incorporates the non-literal ELF material, not as identification
    of the infringed non-literal ELF material itself"

    Now this is where my brain really stops following.

    Especially their "sign analogy" is ridiculous. As if a sign "this
    product is using non-literal ELF material" were any proof (it's not even
    evidence, maybe circumstantial, if you're really forgiving) that the product was
    actually using any.

    So how on Earth would a supposed software expert come up with a conclusion like
    "this code shows that Linux is using non-literal ELF material, but it's not
    in this code"?

    It sounds a bit like a complete technical moron trying to read something into an
    expert's opinion.

    "I've analyzed the defendant's gun; it's not the murder weapon, but it
    clearly proves the defendant used another gun to kill the victim."

    "I've analyzed this code segment here:

    // ELF code implemented below and elsewhere
    echo 'Hi';

    While there's no ELF material here, it clearly proves that ELF material is used
    somewhere else."

    Ridiculous.

    ____
    magicmulder

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    • As IBM would say - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 14 2007 @ 03:54 PM EDT
    Hogwash, of course
    Authored by: GLJason on Tuesday, May 15 2007 @ 04:07 PM EDT

    SCO's basic claim is that they could wait until the expert reports were due to do a full analysis of the code and give the results to IBM. However IBM asked SCO in its interrogatories to disclose all material in Linux that they claim rights to. SCO was bound at that time to do the full analysis and answer the interrogatories fully and completely. They put it off by alleging that they required all IBM AIX and Dynix versions to avoid spending 26,000 man-hours on the task. Now they say their expert completed three expert reports on the very topic in under 500 hours.

    This would be the same as if IBM asked for all emails from Darl McBride that had to do with Project Monterey, but he only handed over ones he had in his "Inbox". Then four months after the close of discovery, SCO hands over hundreds of additional emails after doing a full search of the mail server and all folders where emails are stored. It's simply ludicrous. They claimed they fully answered the interrogatories, which would entail doing a complete search for infringing code by experts. The only thing in the expert reports that wasn't produced before should be that expert's analysis of the infringing code, why they think it is infringing in their expert opinion.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

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