Judge rejects SCO motions in its lawsuit against IBM

By Brice Wallace
Deseret Morning News
Published: Friday, Feb. 24, 2006 7:14 p.m. MST
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The SCO Group Inc. had a couple motions denied Friday in its ongoing case against International Business Machines Corp.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells ruled that Lindon-based SCO should not get more time for depositions of people at Intel, Oracle and The Open Group and denied a different motion to force IBM to provide more documentation in the case. She did give SCO 30 days to file a renewed motion but said it must "narrowly" define areas that have not been covered in documents IBM already has provided to SCO.

SCO has filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit, claiming IBM violated its license with SCO by placing parts of SCO's Unix computer operating system source code into the code for Linux, a freely distributed system that is developed and enhanced by contributors worldwide. IBM and other companies make computers that use Linux. The IBM/SCO contract allowed IBM to use Unix internally but prohibited Unix from being transferred outside IBM.

The high-profile case is being closely watched by the tech community because of its possible ramifications to IBM, SCO and Linux, as well as other companies, including Microsoft Corp., whose products compete with Linux.

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SCO attorney Brent Hatch told Wells that SCO should be given more time to depose 36 people at Intel, Oracle and The Open Group because of delays in doing so that were out of SCO's control. "They did not cooperate with us one iota," he said of Intel.

Hatch said SCO needed the depositions in order to address issues that came up in other depositions that occurred "late in the game."

But Wells ruled that the deadline for depositions was spelled out in an October court order. In the middle of the hearing, she said that if she were to accept SCO's argument, then court orders "would have no meaning."

Wells said SCO gave inadequate notice of the depositions and inadequate time for Intel to prepare for them. While Hatch said that Intel received notice Jan. 12 about the upcoming depositions and therefore had time to prepare, Intel and IBM argued successfully that the actual deposition subpoenas came Jan. 26, a day before the depositions were to occur.

IBM attorney Todd Shaughnessy said that gave Intel less than a day to produce documents and prepare 36 witnesses for depositions to occur at 9 a.m. the next day. An Intel attorney said the Jan. 12 notices contained very broad topics and many technical errors.

"SCO should have noticed them up earlier," Wells concluded.

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com

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