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SCO's Updates its "Legal Update" Page

By Pamela Jones et al.

SCO has posted some new materials on its Legal Update page, under a bizarre header, "Update on Rights to Continue Our UNIX Business." Has that ever been in dispute? If so, I've missed it. And isn't that exactly what SCO keeps trying to sell, its Unix business? I'm confused, unless one defines SCO's "business" as the business of litigation. That seems to be the correct interpretation, as SCO's first paragraph states:

This Web page includes several documents that might be of interest to SCO's shareholders, partners, customers, and friends, and to others interested in SCO's activities to protect its intellectual property.

Do they mean us, in the last category? Or potential buyers? I'm certainly interested, to say the least. SCO's right to continue to sue people was indeed greatly curtailed, if not blocked, by the Utah District Court's August 10th ruling that Novell didn't pass the Unix copyrights to SCO in 1995. So in that sense, we can interpret the new documents as a kind of out-of-court rebuttal.

Why the new materials now? A lot of the documents are clearly about the Novell case, recently tried, making me wonder if they are some of the exhibits filed under seal, and if so why they were filed under seal in the first place. But some seem to relate to the IBM litigation, and one may assume that SCO is aware that the IBM case will be unstayed as soon as SCO files an acceptable Chapter 11 reorganization plan, something it claims to be trying to do. They certainly have enough bills from law firms and financial advisers who tell the court that is what they are working on. Or maybe it's for the court of public opinion. But whatever the reason for posting the materials now, there are some corrections I'd like to make to SCO's presentation. Little by little, I'll cover it all. In this article, I'll tackle SCO's subhead, "Protection of Software."

Full post as published by Groklaw on May 26, 2008 (boomark / email).