SCO ups ante against IBM. (Infrastructure News Review).
SCO Group Inc is raising the stakes against IBM Corp, by seeking over $3bn for alleged misuses of its intellectual property and potentially drawing the US government into its fight.The company has told a US court it is seeking wide-ranging restitution against IBM beyond the original $1bn, for breaches of agreement and unfair trading. The company is also alleging breaches of US export laws by IBM.
SCO's filing was lodged with the US District Court in Utah on Monday, following expiration of a deadline set for IBM to resolve what SCO claimed are abuses of its Unix IP in Linux. SCO pulled what it claimed was IBM's Unix license, as a result, on Monday.
That deadline stemmed from SCO's original court filing against IBM in March. SCO had sought $1bn against IBM, but did not provide further details of the financial aspects of its claim.
In its amended filing, SCO is now seeking $1bn for IBM's alleged breach of a software agreement, $1bn for alleged breach of a Unix contract signed by Sequent, and $1bn for alleged unfair competition, as well as unspecified damages for misappropriation of trade secrets, punitive and exemplary damages and costs.
Also detailed are elements of technology that SCO claims IBM misappropriated.
SCO said: "IBM has caused all or materially all of DYNIX/ptx-based NUMA source code and methods, and RCU [Remove Copy Update] source code and methods, to be used for the benefit of Linux." IBM also breached the Sequent agreement by releasing code for SMP, according to SCO.
SCO claimed Sequent agreed to restrictions on the transfer of DYNIX/ptx to third parties as it was a derivative of SCO's Unix System V. RCU was designed for DYNIX/ptx.
Linus Torvalds was named by SCO in its revised document, too. SCO said the nature of Linux development meant Torvalds would have been "unable or unwilling" to identify the IP origins of code contributed to Linux. Torvalds is reported to have said source code identified does actually exist in the public domain.
SCO's filling also apparently seeks to bring some official leverage against IBM. SCO said it has not granted IBM permission to make code available to Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya, countries subject to strict US export controls.
"IBM is ignoring and attempting to circumvent the export control restrictions that apply to UNIX as it accelerates development of Linux for enterprise use," SCO said.
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| Publication: | MarketWatch: Infrastructure |
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| Date: | Jun 25, 2003 |
| Words: | 403 |
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