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Novell will appeal the SCO case to the US Supreme Court
NOVELL INTENDS TO APPEAL the never-ending SCO case to the US Supreme Court, Groklaw reports.
Novell said it will file a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court to review the previous ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, and it has filed a motion with the Appeals Court asking for a 90-day stay of its mandate so it can file its Supreme Court petition.
A petition for a writ of certiorari basically asks the Supreme Court to review the decision of a lower court. Though it can be denied, and most petitions are denied, Novell believes it has a good chance the case will be reviewed, stating:
"This Court's decision constitutes a departure from decisions of other federal courts of appeals that have confronted the important question of copyright law at issue in this case."
Novell's lawyers then go on to provide a raft of previous case law that contradict the 10th Circuit's ruling in SCO v. Novell.
In its previous petition for en banc review by the entire 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which Novell lost, Novell had argued that the appellate court's three judge panel had decided incorrectly, because federal law requires that the transfer of copyright ownership must be specified explicitly in writing.
In this case, the contract under which Novell sold the right to sell Unix licences to a company, now owned by SCO, has always appeared somewhat contradictory and ambiguous on the issue of transfer of copyrights.
SCO produced witnesses on both sides of the contract negotiations who said they had thought the intent was to transfer the copyrights to SCO. The contract specifically excludes all copyrights, however. But a later amendment hints that Novell might give SCO the Unix copyrights if it were to show that it needed them in order to sell licences, although SCO never claimed that. Instead, it just insisted that it owns those copyrights.
If the Supreme Court denies Novell's petition and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision stands, the case will go back to the US District Court in Utah for a jury trial.
Novell's position, apparently, is that if the appeals court decision stands, anyone will be able to sue over any vague hint of a possible copyright transfer, even if it's written in pencil on the back of a fag packet. µ
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but where the hell did we get the idea of case law in a frickin' Constitutional Republic. We're a nation of written law, and have been, or at least we've supposed to have been, since 1776. So where in the notion of written law do we get the idea that judges get to decide what something says? If more than one meaning can be derived from something, then you don't interpret it, you call it crap and try to fix it.
We need to tell these judges to quit fucking up our country and that they have no right to make law. They never did have the right to make law, and we need to throw that in their faces until they start to straighten out.
We are not a democracy, and we never have been a democracy, we are a Constitutional Republic with a responsibility to protect that Constitutional Republic.
just wanted to clear this piece up.
Essentially North American and many other judicial systems are based on written law, and where there is no Written Law it goes down to Case Law.
First there is constitutional law, law which is supposed to establish fairness and a set of rules.
Written law is supposed to give overrides Case Law.
Case Law is essentially a precedent over the interpretation of written law. Meaning its the first case to have such an occurrence. It also means that should written law not be within the spirit of the constitution it can be removed through the supreme court.
Thus with the three there is an attempt at a balanced judicial system.
Keep it tied up in the courts for the next 100 years, for all I care. By then the copyright will finally expire (barring more Mickey Mouse legislative interference). Novell is the better of the two parties vying for the rights at the moment, but there's no guarantee that once this is all over it won't turn vicious itself.