Opening arguments transcript; issues on appeal; brief due Aug. 30
Al Petrofsky
On Monday, the transcripts of the March 2010 jury trial in SCO
Group v. Novell (No. 2:04-cv-139, D. Utah), which have long been
publicly available from the court reporters for $0.90/page, became
more cheaply and conveniently available from the court's website
for $0.08/page.
Due to a clerical error, the first part of the March 9 transcript,
comprising the opening arguments, was excluded from the price
reduction, but I managed to get that oversight corrected today (see
correspondence below).
I've added all the newly-cheap transcripts to the documents
available at <http://scofacts.org/nefomatic-test-Novell.html> (see
docket Nos. 854 through 869).
I've placed a convenient single PDF file with a combination of most
of the trial transcript at the following location:
http://scofacts.org/Novell-855-combined-trial-pages.pdf
Some features and misfeatures of that file:
1. It includes pages 1 through 2736 (Tuesday March 9 through
Friday March 26), and nothing else, so any page that is
officially numbered page N can be found on the Nth page of the
PDF file, and can be referred to as
<http://scofacts.org/Novell-855-combined-trial-pages.pdf#page=N>.
2. It includes PDF bookmarks to the start of each day.
3. The pages that suffered unexplained shrinkage upon their
entry on the docket have been made more readable by enlarging
them 16% (and cropping them back down to 8.5"x11", without
losing anything other than the absurdly large margins on the
sides and bottom).
4. It does not include some of the reporter's certifications,
because they bogusly share page numbers with some of the other
pages, and therefore their inclusion would eliminate the first
feature.
5. It also doesn't include the March 8 Voir Dire or the March 25
jury instruction conference, because those proceedings were
given their own page numbers.
6. It also doesn't include the reading of the verdict on March
30, because nobody has yet bothered to pay the court reporter to
transcribe it. (If there are any completists with about forty
bucks to spare, please call Karen Murakami at +1 801 328 4800
and pay her to make a transcript.)
2. Issues on appeal; appellant brief due August 30; cross-appeal due today.
Today SCO filed it's docketing statement, which includes the
obligatory but non-binding identification of issues that will be
raised in the appeal. (See 10th Cir. Rule 3.4(B) ("An issue not
raised in the docketing statement may be raised in appellant's
opening brief.")). SCO preliminarily says the issues are these:
(1) Did the district court err in denying SCO's motion and
renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law on the question
whether the copyrights to the UNIX operating system were
transferred to SCO's precedessor-in-interest in 1995?
(2) Did the district court err in denying SCO's alternative
motion for a new trial on the question whether the copyrights to
the UNIX operating system were transferred to SCO's
precedessor-in-interest in 1995?
(3) Did the district court err in concluding that SCO was not
entitled to specific performance, requiring transfer of those
copyrights now, if they were not transferred to SCO's
predecessor-in-interest in 1995?
(4) Did the district court err in concluding that Novell is
entitled to waive SCO's rights under contracts concerning SVRX?
(5) Did the district court err in concluding that Novell
properly waived SCO's rights under contracts concerning SVRX?
(Docketing Statement filed July 21, 2010 in SCO v. Novell,
No. 10-4122, 10th. Cir,
<http://scofacts.org/SCO-vs-Novell-appeal3-01018461143.pdf>)
SCO also declared that transcribing any of the proceedings for
which transcripts have not already been filed is unnecessary for
the appeal. (I believe the only such proceedings are the December
1, 2009 scheduling conference and the March 30, 2010 verdict
reading.) Accordingly, the district court certified that the
record is complete, and the initial deadline for SCO's opening
appellant brief has been set as Monday, August 30, 2010.
(This deadline would change in the unlikely event that Novell,
within 14 days, states that it considers the transcript of one of
those proceedings to be necessary for the appeal. See
Fed. R. App. P. Rule 10(b)(3)(B).)
By the way, Novell still has about five hours (until 24:00 -0600)
in which to file it's own notice of appeal, if it desires (see FRAP
4(a)(3)). Although Novell got almost everything it wanted in the
final judgment, it's possible Novell will file an appeal just so
that it can make the conditional request that if the tenth circuit
vacates the latest "final" judgment (as it did the first one) that
it also reverse some of the pre-trial rulings that went against
Novell.
3. Docket listings
I've made copies of docket listings for the three appeals in this
case available here:
http://scofacts.org/SCO-vs-Novell-appeal1-docket.html
http://scofacts.org/SCO-vs-Novell-appeal2-docket.html
http://scofacts.org/SCO-vs-Novell-appeal3-docket.html
Those include links to the court's copies of the filed documents.
Many of the documents are also available from scofacts, using URLs
you can probably figure out, but the nefomatic software's appellate
court support is still too retarded to generate a page with both
the docket information and links to my copies of the documents.
4. Email mentioned above
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:36:41 -0700
From: Al Petrofsky
To: Jennifer Richards
Subject: Transcript docketing error in SCO v. Novell 2:04-cv-139
Dear Ms. Richards:
In the SCO Group v. Novell case (No. 2:04-cv-139), docket entry #855
states that it contains part one of the Tuesday, March 9, 2010
transcript, but the attached document is actually a duplicate of the
Monday, March 8 transcript that was also attached to docket #854.
Could you attach an image of the March 9 part 1 transcript to entry
#855?
Thanks for looking into this.
Yours truly,
Alan Petrofsky
------
Subject: Re: Transcript docketing error in SCO v. Novell 2:04-cv-139
To: Al Petrofsky
From: Jennifer Richards
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:13:05 -0600
Dear Mr. Petrofsky:
Thanks for emailing me. I have forwarded this email to the Court Reporter.
I will need to get the transcript from her before I can fix the docket.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Richards
Appeals/Generalist Clerk
U.S.District Court-District of Utah
------
Subject: Re: Transcript docketing error in SCO v. Novell 2:04-cv-139
To: Al Petrofsky
From: Jennifer Richards
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:28:41 -0600
This should be correct now. Thanks for letting me know.
Jennifer Richards