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How the Trial Will Go, Beginning Tomorrow (SCO v. Novell)

By Pamela Jones et al.

The trial in SCO v. Novell -- which has morphed into exclusively Novell's counterclaims against SCO -- begins tomorrow morning, and the parties have filed a Joint Pretrial Stipulation [PDF] and then an Amended one [PDF]. For purposes of this trial, Novell is the plaintiff and SCO the defendant, so Novell will be going first. Thanks to the Stipulation, we know how the trial is structured. Each side will limit itself to 10 hours. It's 10 hours sort of like football, thought, so don't imagine it will all be over in, say, a long day or two days. A football team might have a minute left on the clock, but it takes a half hour to play it out. Similarly here, 10 hours each doesn't count things like conferences with the judge at the bench and things like that. It will go like this:

• Novell's opening statement
• SCO's opening statement
• Novell's affirmative witnesses
• SCO's affirmative witnesses
• Novell's rebuttal witnesses, if any
• SCO's sur-rebuttal witnesses, if any
• SCO's closing statement
• Novell's closing statement

They've also exchanged lists of witnesses they will call and in what order, and they agree that if there are to be any changes, they'll each make an effort "in good faith" to notify each other with at least 24 hours' notice, if possible.

I know what you're thinking. SCO. Good Faith. Hardy Har. But Novell got SCO to agree that this stipulation isn't a green light to suddenly add surprise witnesses. If SCO tries anything like that, the stipulation can be pointed to, and SCO will need to present a very good reason. Still, I wouldn't be amazed if there were a surprise or two here or there which SCO will say it couldn't help. They have a history of loving surprises.

To me, the biggest surprise is that so far as we know, SCO isn't calling any witnesses, like Microsoft or Sun, to tell the court what its SCOsource license was for. SCO needs somebody to say it was for UnixWare. That's a huge and stunning blank.

Full post as published by Groklaw on April 28, 2008 (boomark / email).