I believe PJ at Groklaw had done some great analysis and collection of evidence among her team in their Open Letter to Darl McBride. Recently, another US attorney, Douglas L. Rogers, who actually specialized in IP litigation, has written an excellent article on the subject in the July 2003 issue of the Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal:

The SCO Litigation: Maintaining Walls Around Trade Secrets or Attacking the Knowledge of Those Outside the Walls?

http://www.vssp.com/CM/Articles/Articles1016.asp

I was tempted to suggest IBM should hire him to join its legal defense team, or as a legal consultant to offer advice in the process of litigation.

On another front, eWeek's Linux and Open Source editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has offered his insight on who's really behind the suit, no surprise:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1358809,00.asp

Any lawyers here that can translate the first article into a simple to read English? I mean.. from what I read, I gathered that this lawyer said that SCO has a very weak case against IBM.

Interesting but dense and hard to follow. Is he talking real english ? I mean for ordinary people like me ? Sometimes lisp looks more readable.

There should be a law forcing lawyers and attorneys to use a max of 10 words per sentence, out of a 3000 words dictionary. You know, a kind of RISL (Reduced Instruction Set Lawyer)...

I had no problem following it. Keep in mind that there are 2 or more kinds of Law here. What people think of as Federal, State, or Municipal Law, is correctly called "Code." In the USA:

Federal Law = U.S. Code, as Revised. (entire nation)

State of Ohio Law = Ohio Revised Code. (entire State of Ohio)

Mansfield City Laws = Mansfield Municipal Code (city of Mansfield, only)

Then, no matter what the written Code says, what really counts, is Case Law. Did you notice the multiple references to specific Court Cases? That is Case Law. This is where the Precedents are set forth. Case Law determines How Code (written laws) apply (limitations and so forth).

A real good example of a non-secret secret, is the relationship between Voltage, Current (amperes), and Resistance. It is called Ohm's Law, which is a basic Law of Physics. The US military Classified Ohm's Law as Top Secret (WW2). One of the first things learned in basic electricity or electronics, is Ohm's Law! Gee, it wasn't a secret even before WW2!!

See how this applies to the SCO vs IBM and Linux case?? SCO is claiming that not only UNIX System V belongs to SCO, but, ALL Derived Works since. SCO claims ALL OS Source code belongs to SCO! Which is clear from both articles cited by links.

SCO will have an extremely hard time in Court, based on the Case Law cited.