[ Thanks to Joe
Borsits for this link. ]
“[SCO] missed an important step. To bring a slander of title
action, you must be the owner of the property. They can’t prove
that they own the copyrights to Unix and UnixWare, because Novell
claims they do. Thus, they are hinting, they brought the wrong kind
of case. They didn’t prove the precise amount of money damages they
have suffered, and they can’t, under the circumstances, so they
can’t win. Damages must be precise, not just speculative, and all
they presented to the court was vague ‘We’ve been damaged in some
way’ allegations, and since they have no clear title to the
copyright, they can’t prove the damages element until they prove
they actually own the copyrights.“In a slander of title action, there are necessary elements you
have to prove to win. It’s like when you hit the ball in baseball,
you don’t get a home run unless you actually run around and touch
all the bases. You can’t just stand there and say, It’s out of the
ballpark, so I don’t need to bother running around. In slander of
title, one of the elements you must ‘touch’ to get your ‘home run’
is ‘that special damages were sustained thereby,’ and special here
means specific, that you can show to the penny exactly what you
lost. I’ll explain more about slander of title elements in the next
article…”