SCO Group
McBride contends that the transfer agreement does in fact give the
But he also said, “The copyrights are not important to our current
McBride also announced that SCO will follow through with its promise to
“As we go forward, the month of June is show-and-tell time,” he said.
Adding a degree of specificity which the company has not displayed until
But while SCO acknowledges that its suit against IBM is based solely on
Friday lashed out against Novell’s claims
that it still owns the copyrights to Unix, while repeating that
its current legal
battle with IBM over Unix licenses is based solely on contractual matters, not copyrights.
Calling Novell’s challenge — which he noted was timed to coincide with and
overshadow SCO’s quarterly results announcement — a “desperate measure to
curry favor with the Linux community,” SCO CEO Darl McBride said he is
confident that SCO does in fact own the copyright per the transfer
agreement between SCO and Novell , adding, “We will be
settling those issues in court.”
In an open letter sent to McBride Thursday, Jack L. Messman, chairman,
president and CEO of Novell, said, “Importantly, and contrary to SCO’s
assertions, SCO is not the owner of the Unix copyrights. Not only would a
quick check of U.S. Copyright Office records reveal this fact, but a review
of the asset transfer agreement between Novell and SCO confirms it. To
Novell’s knowledge, the 1995 agreement governing SCO’s purchase of Unix
from Novell does not convey to SCO the associated copyrights. We believe it
unlikely that SCO can demonstrate that it has any ownership interest
whatsoever in those copyrights. Apparently, you share this view, since over
the last few months you have repeatedly asked Novell to transfer the
copyrights to SCO, requests that Novell has rejected. Finally, we find it
telling that SCO failed to assert a claim for copyright or patent
infringement against IBM.”
copyrights to SCO, adding that his requests to Novell were a matter of
clarification. “We clearly have a dispute over that issue,” he said. “Very
clearly there is contract language here that says we have the copyright
contracts here to go out and sell this business.”
enforcement actions.”
SCO has sued IBM for misappropriation of trade secrets, claiming that IBM
breached its licensing agreement with SCO by allowing portions of Unix code
or derivative works of its license to filter into the Linux community. As a
result of the alleged breach of contract, SCO’s Chris Sontag, senior vice
president of the company’s SCOsource intellectual property licensing
division, said SCO now has the right to revoke Big Blue’s AIX license.
Sontag said SCO sent a letter to IBM informing it of this on March 7,
starting a 100-day clock which goes off on June 13.
“We fully expect to follow through with the demands of that letter,” Sontag
said.
show evidence of Unix code in Linux and the Linux kernel beginning next
week. The company will provide certain licensees, analysts and members of
the press with the evidence, under non-disclosure agreements. However,
McBride also said that the company will not show all of its evidence.
“We’re not going to show two lines of code, we’re going to show hundreds of
lines of code. But we’re not going to show all of the code because of the
legal issues we have going on.”
now, Sontag added, “We’re especially concerned about version 2.4 and beyond
of the Linux kernel.” He noted that the company’s analysis of Linux code
has mostly focused on code released in the last few years.
contractual matters, it is also using the case as a platform to try Linux
in the court of public opinion. Two weeks ago it sent a
letter to about 1,350 corporations which use Linux, warning them,
“Linux is an unauthorized derivative of Unix and that legal liability for
the use of Linux may extend to commercial users.”