| SCO loses latest subpoena attempts |
Feb. 28, 2006
When The SCO Group Inc. decided to subpoena Oracle Corp., Intel Corp., and The Open Group Inc. (an open-standards group that holds the Unix trademark), for information dealing with Unix, IBM, and SCO, at the last minute, there were doubts about whether SCO could actually do this. Those doubts have been settled: No, SCO can't.
According to several Groklaw reports from the U.S. District Court hearing in Salt Lake City, Utah, Judge Brooke Wells observed that, according to her October 12, 2005 order, all discovery depositions must be completed by the cutoff date.
SCO argued that it had given the companies adequate time to meet the demands of the discovery depositions.
Unimpressed, Brooke ruled from the bench that SCO's subpoenas of January 12th gave inadequate notice of time and were defective in both substance and service, so the judge denied SCO's request to subpoena with prejudice. This means that SCO will not be able to try again.
SCO seems to have wanted to go on a "fishing expedition" for evidence that IBM had used SCO's Unix code to improve Linux. From the Oracle subpoena, for example, SCO wanted "Documents concerning the identification of all versions of all Oracle software products that Oracle certified for operation on any version of any UNIX-based operating system, including but not limited to UnixWare, OpenServer, AIX, HPUX, Irix, Dynix, and Linux, since January 1, 1995."
After the companies had not turned over such documents by January 27th, SCO asked the court on February 17th to compel the companies to respond, and wanted the court to permit any relevant discoveries to be taken into account even though it would be after the 27th.
The companies, in the meantime, objected to SCO's requests on several grounds.
Oracle was willing to answer some, but not all, of SCO's questions. So, the database giant wanted SCO to narrow its questions down and to redo the subpoena since it was legally defective for numerous reasons.
Intel said that it not been "given adequate notice." The company claimed that SCO had only properly served Intel with its subpoena at 3:26 p.m. on the day before the discovery cut-off.
Intel's attorneys continued, "Why SCO waited until the eleventh hour to seek this discovery when discovery has been ongoing in the case for the past two years is unclear."
In response, according to a report in the DeseretNews, SCO attorney Brent Hatch told Wells that Intel "did not cooperate with us one iota."
In the end, Judge Wells didn't cooperate either.
However, while Wells also denied SCO's attempt to get still more documents from IBM concerning the case, she did so without prejudice. This means that SCO has 30 days to file a renewed motion in which the company spells out exactly what information it's looking for.
SCO vs. IBM is still set to go to court on February 26, 2007.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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