Law

Wal-Mart’s filing of a cert. petition in a massive gender discrimination case dominates today’s headlines.  In the petition, the company – which is the nation’s largest private employer – asks the Court to review an en banc ruling of the Ninth Circuit allowing over one million women to pursue their claims for damages as a [...]

UPDATE: The Wal-Mart petition has been docketed as 10-277. ——————– Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest private employer, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to put new limits on the use of payroll-wide lawsuits in job bias cases, and to block such sweeping claims when workers are asking for back pay and other forms of money [...]

The “Notable petitions” feature lists petitions that are likely to appear on our “Petitions to watch” list when they are scheduled for consideration by the Justices.  “Notable petitions” are those that Tom has identified as raising one or more questions that has a reasonable chance of being granted in an appropriate case.  We generally do [...]

Responding to an order by the Court, a federal district court judge in Georgia found that death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis “is not innocent” of murdering a police officer twenty-one years ago.  SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston reports that the judge, William T. Moore, Jr., apparently was “acting as a fact-gatherer directly for the Supreme Court, so [...]

In the latest effort to salvage authority for federal judges to control the legal fate of Guantanamo Bay detainees, lawyers for 31 of those prisoners have told the D.C. Circuit Court that they will seek to return to the Supreme Court if lower courts move to scuttle that new effort.  In two filings on Monday, [...]

This could get interesting. HTC has filed its answer to Apple's complaint [PDFs] against them for patent infringement, with affirmative defenses and counterclaims. The case, Apple Inc. v. High Tech Computer Corp. et al, is now before Judge Gregory M. Sleet, docket number: 1:10-cv-00544-GMS, in the US District Court in Delaware. The et al means there are others as defendants, and the full caption is Apple Inc. and NeXt Software, Inc. v. High Tech Computer Corp., a/k/a HTC Corp., HTC (B.V.I.) Corp., HTC America, Inc., and Exedea, Inc. The defendants are asking to move the case from Delaware, where Apple filed, to Northern California. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be in any state *but* Delaware, after watching SCO's bankruptcy there.HTC denies infringing the patents, of course, but they also say as a first affirmative defense that four of the patents are invalid for "failure to comply with one or more of the conditions for patentability set forth in Title 35 of the United States Code, including, but not limited to, utility, novelty, non-obviousness, enablement, written description and definiteness in accordance with 35 U.S.C. §§ 101, 102, 103, 112, and/or 116, or are invalid pursuant to the judicial doctrine barring double-patenting". HTC also claims prior art, marking, laches and marking defenses, and it says it has license agreements with third party suppliers to do what they do the things Apple is suing them over. It asks the court to declare the patents invalid. Here's a recent case highlighted on EFF's site where some of those types of defenses worked perfectly. You know how in the movies when two guys get into a fight on the street, another guy will run into a bar and yell, Fight! and everyone runs outside to watch? I feel like that guy reading this filing, because I see HTC intends to fight back.

Carrying out a direct order of the Supreme Court, a federal judge in Georgia made a lengthy new study of a 21-year-old murder case but then ruled Tuesday that a Savannah, Ga., man had not proved that he is innocent of killing a police officer in a fast-food restaurant parking lot.   In a 172-page opinion [...]

The “Notable petitions” feature lists petitions that are likely to appear on our “Petitions to watch” list when they are scheduled for consideration by the Justices.  “Notable petitions” are those that Tom has identified as raising one or more questions that has a reasonable chance of being granted in an appropriate case.  We generally do [...]

At Balkinization, Jason Mazzone analyzes an assertion made by now-retired Justice Stevens in his dissenting opinion in McDonald v. Chicago – that provisions of the Bill of Rights do not need to apply the same way everywhere.  Although Justices Alito and Scalia criticized this view in their plurality and concurring opinions, respectively, as “aggrandizing judicial [...]

It will not surprise you to learn that the bankruptcy court has approved SCO's request to auction off "substantially all of the debtors' software business assets" free from liens, claims and encumbrances, as well as certain executory contracts and leases. We learn this from the docket minutes and the signed order. Details will follow from our reporters who attended the hearing today.

Look what I just found, SCO's Partners page from 2002, on Internet Archive, and lo and behold, it provides proof positive that SCO, then calling itself Caldera, knew that IBM was involved with Linux as far back as 1998. That's the year Santa Cruz and IBM signed the agreement regarding Project Monterey, executed in October of 1998. No one, therefore, Santa Cruz or Caldera, had any reason to be in the dark about IBM's Linux activities while IBM was also working on Project Monterey. Now that the old caldera.com pages are on Internet Archive again, thanks to SCO selling off the domain name, many interesting things are surfacing, and we find out why SCO tried to hide them for so long. They should have waited a little bit longer.

The Supreme Court on Monday released the schedule of oral arguments to be heard in the two-week session that begins on Monday, Nov. 1.  During this sitting, the Court will have only one afternoon session — on Tuesday, Nov. 2.   Morning arguments begin at 10 a.m.  An afternoon argument starts at 1 p.m.  A day-by-day [...]

At the Washington Post, Philip Kennicott discusses a resolution, recently introduced by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), “calling on the Supreme Court to reopen the iconic [front] doors,” which were closed in early May for security reasons.  Kennicott suggests this resolution could “be the beginning of a new conversation” about “the public’s role in making security [...]

Last week, we updated our sister site, SCOTUSwiki, to include a number of new filings in OT10 merits cases.  New petitioners’ briefs have been added to the case pages for CSX Transportation, Inc. v. Alabama Department of Revenue and Skinner v. Switzer, and we have added newly filed respondents’ briefs to the case pages for [...]

We have at last Novell's appeal brief [PDF] in the private antitrust case Novell brought against Microsoft regarding WordPerfect. The brief was filed with the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. It begins: "This case has been here before." Indeed. Here's the decision from the US District Court in Maryland that Novell is appealing, as text. But there's more. Microsoft is fighting to keep certain documents it alleges the judge in the district court didn't base his ruling on from being considered by the court of appeals. Here's the Microsoft Motion to Strike [PDF]. The full title is Motion to Strike Certain Exhibits from the Joint Appendix and Any References to Such Documents in Novell's Brief. Microsoft is relying in part on some cases Novell already pointed out to Microsoft don't apply, as I'll show you. [Update: One of the exhibits is actually marked as filed under seal. So we've now split them apart.] [Update 2: We checked, and the filing is now unsealed and is part of the public record, so I've added it to the list.] But the case is interesting also on a tech level, because, in my view, the judge doesn't understand fully the difference between an operating system and an application. He ruled that WordPerfect is, under the relevant APA, an associated DOS operating system product and hence covered by the DR DOS litigation Caldera brought successfully against Microsoft. Because he lumped them together in a jujitsu way, accepting Microsoft's position, he found for Microsoft on summary judgment. That reminds me, because Groklaw is now in the Library of Congress's digital collection, accessible if you visit the library, I have been taking time to try to fix older broken links, and I just finished updating the links in the US v. Microsoft litigation section, part of our permanent page on Microsoft Litigation, to include the famous video moment, the doctored video. There are links now to Ed Felten's testimony [PDF] that you could indeed uninstall IE in Windows 98, the trial exhibits, the depositions used, and direct testimony transcripts. including the transcript of the cross examination of Microsoft's Jim Allchin by David Boies, the famous Perry Mason moment. The transcript is, ironically enough, in Microsoft's .doc format, but if you don't have Microsoft Windows and don't wish to buy it, you can download OpenOffice.org for free, as in beer and as in freedom, thanks in part to all the antitrust rulings in the US and the EU and then thanks to all the volunteers who worked so hard to give us a viable alternative, and you'll be able to read it just fine. If you notice any broken links, particularly on our permanent pages, please let me know. Being included in the Library of Congress is a great honor that I feel deeply, and when I disappear on the weekends somewhat these days, it's because I'm feeling that responsibility, knowing our work is available to researchers there who might not otherwise know about Groklaw, and I want to be sure our historical collections are as accurate as human limitations and the constantly changing Internet allow, so they are optimally useful. Also, I continue to work on completing our collection of exhibits in the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust case, some of which turned out to be relevant in the Novell v. Microsoft case, so if you'd like to help finish up, just go here, find any numbered PDF that isn't described or available in full as text, and do either a description or a transcript following the general style you see others have used, and then post what you find in plain text, ideally with HTML done and showing, or email me by clicking on the envelope icon. Thank you. But let's take a look at the latest dispute in the Novell v. Microsoft appeal.

We have a new Timeline page where you will be able to find all the filed documents in the Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc. litigation. The complaint and other administrative filings are there now, and when Google files an answer, you'll find it there. So if you read something in the media about the case, you can always verify the facts right here in the filings themselves. We've added a link to the new page in the standard menu. We also have set up a new topic, so if you are a member and you read Groklaw by topic, look for OraclevGoogle.

The Court is in recess for the summer; it is expected to return on October 4 for the first oral argument of October Term 2010. The schedule of merits briefs due this week follows the jump. Monday, August 23: Petitioner’s reply in Harrington v. Richter (09-587) Tuesday, August 24: Petitioner’s brief in Virginia Office of [...]

A group of Arizona taxpayers, in a new filing in the Supreme Court, has suggested that the Justices consider avoiding a ruling in a major case on tuition tax credits for parents of parochial school students, at least until the impact of a new Arizona state law has been assessed, first by lower courts. The [...]

SCO's Chapter 11 Trustee in the bankruptcy has replied to Oracle and Novell's reservation of rights filings regarding his desire to sell off SCO's assets, whatever that means to him. He does now provide more information about that. We learn from footnote 2 that he also got informal responses from the US Trustee's Office and from HP, although later in the document he says his lawyers have resolved some of the OUST's issues and will discuss the rest at the Sale hearing. HP had concerns about "a certain release agreement" between SCO and HP, dated August 15, 2003. Interesting. I don't recall any such document. So this is Cahn's omnibus reply to them all, with some points regarding each objection. He still wants the sale to go forward, and the hearing on this will be Monday at 3 PM, so I hope some of you can go! The schedule for the day is filed as well, with all the details.

The “Notable Petitions” feature lists petitions that are likely to appear on our “Petitions to Watch” list when they are scheduled for consideration by the Justices.  ”Notable Petitions” are those that Tom has identified as raising one or more questions that has a reasonable chance of being granted in an appropriate case.  We generally do [...]