SCO DOWN FOR THE COUNT?

I really hope so. From eWeek:

At first glance, it appears that The SCO Group's case against IBM for Linux/Unix intellectual property right violations is all but over, after the judge said Tuesday that the court hasn't seen any hard evidence to support SCO's claims.

U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball wrote Tuesday, "It is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities."

But analysts and lawyers disagree on whether SCO is down to its last strike.

While Lawrence Rosen, an open-source legal expert and partner in the Ukiah, Calif.-based law firm Rosenlaw & Einschlag, described the latest developments as being merely "the delay of the inevitable," others don't see it as being such an open-and-shut case.

"Yes, this is very damning," said Thomas Carey, chairman of the business practice group at Boston-based Bromberg & Sunstein LLP. "Judge Kimball has seen all of the evidence presented to date, and has concluded that there is no there there.

"Unfortunately for IBM, Judge Kimball leaves open the possibility that intermediate forms of the code found in AIX may present the missing link between Unix and Linux," Carey said. (full article)