Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs -> Groklaw

Intellectual Property Law

: Groklaw

SCO's Prentice-Hall Letter - McBride's Trial Testimony

By Pamela Jones et al.

A number of media reports have focused on Darl McBride's testimony in last week's SCO v. Novell trial, which morphed into Novell v. SCO when all but Novell's counterclaims were decided on summary judgment back in August. McBride asserted again that Unix is in Linux, blah blah.

But what was more interesting to me was a piece of "evidence" that he tried to introduce into the record via his testimony. It's a letter from 1996, I believe this letter [PDF] to Prentice Hall, the publishers, about who to contact regarding certain Unix works. The timing is after the APA in 1995. This may be the low water mark in the SCO saga's "evidence", so I thought I'd go over a few details about it. For sure, the SCO lawyers, at least, had to know that it doesn't prove what McBride tried to use it to prove, although they did quote from the letter in SCO's Memorandum in Opposition to Novell's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on its 4th Counterclaim for Relief, and in Support of SCO's Cross Motion for Partial Summary Judgment , a motion Novell won in the August 10 decision. So, the letter didn't help SCO at all then, and it is unlikely to do so now.

Full post as published by Groklaw on May 07, 2008 (boomark / email).