[luau] SCO execs unloading shares

Taylor Cody L. Contractor 502 AOS/PETS Cody.Taylor at hickam.af.mil
Wed Aug 13 08:56:00 PDT 2003


http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Aug/08122003/business/83193.asp

Highlights:
SCO Group executives have sold about 119,000 shares of their company since
it filed a lawsuit against IBM in March and the stock price increased more
than fourfold..

	Chief Financial Officer Robert Bench began the $1.2 million in
executive share sales four days after Lindon -based SCO filed its lawsuit
against Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM on March 6.  Before Bench's sale, SCO
insiders had not sold shares in more than a year, according to the
Washington Service, a firm that tracks insider transactions..

	Bench has sold 17,151 shares in three separate sales since March 10,
reducing his holdings to 228,043 shares, according to the Washington Service
and regulatory filings.  Vice President Michael Wilson sold his entire stake
of 12,000 shares between July 14 and July 18, the Washington Service said.. 

	SCO has certain ownership rights to Unix, a predecessor to Linux. It
has decided Linux infringes on those rights, and is seeking $1 billion from
IBM and up to $700 from every Linux user.  Among the many bizarre things
about the complaint, though, is that SCO itself used to be a Linux company
called Caldera, and as such eagerly distributed free of charge the very same
software it now is claiming infringes its copyrights..

	SCO says it won't identify all the infringing code in Linux because
Linux developers would quickly replace it. But isn't that exactly what
someone alleging a legal injury should, for starters, want -- to stop being
injured?  Damages for past injuries can always come later.  Or maybe SCO
knows that if it laid out its cards, people would just walk away from the
table laughing at its hand -- rather than pay a license fee.  Or is
collecting these license fees SCO's real endgame?  Computerworld recently
ran an article detailing how SCO's backers are cashing in its stock in a
complex transaction involving purchase of a company owned by the Canopy
Group, a Utah investment concern that also owns a big chunk of SCO.  An SCO
spokesman said the report's allegations of a "shell game" weren't true, and
added that SCO has no control over its stock price... 

	SCO and its supporters might do well to study the last time a
specious intellectual property claim was lodged against Linux.  In 1995,
William Della Croce Jr., of Boston, attempted to win the trademark to the
term "Linux," claiming he had been the first to use it and demanding 10
percent royalties from Linux businesses.  The Linux community promptly went
to work -- exactly as it is doing today.  In the end, not only did Della
Croce lose, he also had to pay legal fees.  For good measure, the Linux
trademark, previously unassigned, was given to Linus Torvalds, the system's
creator. 



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