First Analyst Impressed By SCO's 'Proof'

[Jeffrey Pyne]

On Friday, June 06, 2003 10:20 AM, George Gambill wrote:

> Did Novell sell the Intellectual Property rights to SCO?  
> Novell claims to still own the IP.
>
> If SCO doesn't own the IP, who cares what they find....

SCO responded to Novell's letter a day or so after its release, claiming
that the contract they signed with Novell transferred "ownership of UNIX"
from Novell to SCO, excluding the copyrights and patents.  They're saying
that, although Novell still owns the intellectual property, SCO, as the
'owner' of UNIX (whatever that means), has the right to enforce IP
infringements.  Novell, of course, says "Hogwash!"  I guess it's one for the
lawyers to debate and decide.

Here's an excerpt from the contract that was signed when SCO obtained the
rights to UNIX (from here:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2135637,00.html):

  An excerpt from Schedule 1.1(a) describes the included assets as:

    "All rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare, including 
     but not limited to all versions of UNIX and UnixWare and
     all copies of UNIX and UnixWare (including revisions and
     updates in process), and all technical, design development,
     installation, operation and maintenance information
     concerning UNIX and UnixWare, including source code, source
     documentation, source listings and annotations, appropriate
     engineering notebooks, test data and test results, as well
     as all reference manuals and support materials normally
     distributed by Seller to end-users and potential end-users
     in connection with the distribution of UNIX and
     UnixWare..."

  But as excerpt from Schedule 1.1(b) describes the excluded assets as:

    "Intellectual property: 
       A. All copyrights and trademarks, except for the
          trademarks UNIX and UnixWare.
       B. All Patents"

Ahhhh, that makes everything clear as mud.

~Jeff