Red Hat: SCO won't see IBM suit through - News - Software

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Red Hat: SCO won't see IBM suit through

By Andrew Colley, 0
August 08, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Red-Hat-SCO-won-t-see-IBM-suit-through/0,130061733,120276992,00.htm

SCO Group is unlikely to continue pursuing a US$3 billion law suit it filed against IBM March for allegedly copying proprietary Unix intellectual property into Linux according to Red Hat.

Red Hat senior vice president and general counsel, Mark Webbink, argued that SCO's strategy since launching the legal action indicated and that the company was unlikely to pursue the case to the judgment stage.

"They haven't pursued it to date, they have given no evidence that they have the stomach to pursue it, and now they're facing counter-claims that will undermine their own business," said Webbink.

Webbink claims that SCO has not filed discovery motions against IBM since launching its legal action indicating, he believes, that SCO is not making a serious attempt to pursue its case.

However, Representatives of SCO in Australia today reasserted the company's commitment to the case.

"SCO will continue to pursue its IP claims against IBM, vigorously," said a spokesperson for SCO.

Webbink said the company's assessment formed an important part of the Linux distributor's decision to launch a retaliatory law suit against SCO Monday.

According to Webbink, Red Hat's retaliatory suit constituted an opportunity for SCO to put-up or shut-up.

"We looked SCO's yammering in the press and said 'enough's enough'; we're going to stand up for ourselves and the open source community, and demand that these guys provide proof or be quiet," he said.

Red Hat's legal action was shortly followed by IBM's counter-suit against SCO, which was filed in the US late Wednesday. In filing the suit IBM echoed statements made by open source proponents over previous months.

"Simply put, SCO's scheme is an attempt to profit from its limited rights to a very old UNIX operating system by introducing fear, uncertainty and doubt into the marketplace," wrote IBM in a statement it released yesterday.

In the suit it filed March, SCO alleged that IBM misappropriated its proprietary Unix code and related intellectual property and added it to Linux.

IBM replied to the argument in its filing saying SCO couldn't claim that the material is proprietary because it distributed a version of Linux containing the code under the open-source General Public License (GPL).

"By distributing products under the GPL, SCO agreed, among other things, not to assert -- indeed, it is prohibited from asserting -- certain proprietary rights (such as the right to collect license fees) over any source code distributed under the terms of the GPL. SCO also agreed not to restrict further distribution of any source code distributed by SCO under the terms of the GPL," read IBM's counter-claim.

Not content to remain in a defensive position, IBM has also accused SCO of violating four patents it holds in connection with SCO's UnixWare, Open Server, SCO Manager and Reliant HA clustering software products.

IBM is seeking an unspecified amount of damages against SCO for the patent violations and an injunction preventing the software company distributing the software products.