Judge Dale Kimball, the judge presiding over SCO v. Novell, which was just sent back to him when the Bankruptcy Court in Delaware lifted the automatic stay, has issued an order [PDF]. He'd like the parties to tell him what's left, can any of it be handled by summary judgment, and does the subtraction of the constructive trust issue mean the trial will be shorter. Any other matters they'd like to tell him about in the joint statement he leaves to their discretion. And he'd like to know by the 13th. Their answers will impact how soon he can schedule the trial, but he's interested in doing so as soon as possible.

"As protests mount over the Canadian DMCA, law professor Michael Geist is now reporting that the government plans to delay addressing fair use and consumer copyright concerns such as the blank media tax for years. While the U.S. copyright lobby get their DMCA, consumers will get a panel to eventually consider possible changes to the law. Many Canadians are responding today with a mass phone-in to Industry Minister Jim Prentice to protest the policy plans."

Groklaw member LEXLAW suggested that now would be a good time to take a second look at Novell's Trial Brief [PDF]. It was filed in Utah back in the middle of September, on the same day that SCO filed for bankruptcy in Delaware, and so we never did a text version or paid much attention. But now that we are Utah bound, here it is, the text version, the work of the entire Groklaw Group. You know, like the SCO Group and the 363 Group? Except there are more of us than there are of them, now that I think of it.

Witness No. 3 continued on the stand Tuesday in the Hans Reiser murder trial, and she quickly became the subject of several insults under cross examination by the defendant's attorney.

Now it's getting interesting. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' father's law firm, known as the firm that represents Microsoft, has just filed a Notice of Entry of Appearance and Demand for Notices and Papers [PDF] in the SCO bankruptcy on behalf of MSLI, Inc., otherwise known as Microsoft Licensing, one of the creditors on SCO's list. In fact, one of the 20 top creditors [PDF], owed $125,000 or so. That would give them a seat at the creditors committee table, presumably, should they so desire, if a committee is formed later.

The young son of Linux guru Hans Reiser resumed testimony at his father's murder trial after a lunch break Tuesday. The 8-year-old boy told jurors he saw his father carrying "somebody" rolled up "like a ball" inside a bag down the stairs of his father's Oakland house the night his mother vanished.

In the United States, SCO's Linux/Unix litigation has been stalled out while the company's bankruptcy trial is being dealt with. In Germany, however, several court cases have found SCO Group GmbH, SCO's Germany branch, guilty of lying about Linux containing stolen Unix code.

Hans Reiser, the popular open-source Linux engineer, traumatized his 5-year-old young son with violent video games and horror movies, prosecutor Paul Hora told jurors in the opening of Reiser's murder trial.