[Am-info] Judge Dismisses Most of SCO Group Lawsuit

[Gene Gaines]

,

The SCO case against Damiler-Chrysler got to court, and SCO
appears to have turned into road kill in 18 minutes.

For a enjoyable narrative of the court proceeding, that
will draw you into a tangle of happy email threads, see:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040721122325926

Here is the way CNET reported it:

  SCO flops in DaimlerChrysler Unix lawsuit
  By Stephen Shankland
  CNET News.com
  July 21, 2004, 3:20 PM PT

  The SCO Group, a struggling company with a loud campaign to
  profit from Unix intellectual property, has largely lost a case
  it brought against DaimlerChrysler.

  In a hearing Wednesday, Judge Rae Lee Chabot of Oakland County
  Circuit Court in Michigan granted most of DaimlerChrysler's
  motion to dismiss the case, SCO and DaimlerChrysler
  representatives said.

  The loss doesn't set a precedent, but it does make it harder for
  SCO to pursue its overall case, said Mark Radcliffe, an
  intellectual-property attorney at Gray Cary. "The more that SCO
  is unsuccessful in its claims, the more it decreases their
  ability to go out and use the threat of litigation to obtain
  settlements," he said. "It diminishes their credibility."

  SCO sued DaimlerChrysler in March, alleging that it hadn't
  certified its compliance with its SCO contract to use the System
  V version of the Unix operating system. In April,
  DaimlerChrysler provided the certification, saying it wasn't
  using the software at all anymore, then moved to dismiss the
  suit.

  The case "for the most part, probably" is over, SCO spokesman
  Blake Stowell said.

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This does not mean that SCO's Microsoft-financed campaign
against Linux is over, but it is a good start.

Gene Gaines
gene.gaines@gainesgroup.com
Sterling, Virginia