Legal View: What SCO's Linux suits mean for users

Donald Muirhead, Choate, Hall & Stewart, LLP   Today’s Top Stories    or  Other Legislation/Regulation Stories  

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April 28, 2004 (Computerworld) -- The copyright infringement suit filed by The SCO Group Inc. against IBM in March 2003 received the attention of the Linux community because of its potential impact on every user and developer of Linux. SCO is a licensor of the Unix operating system and purports to own a copyright in the Unix source code. In its suit SCO alleges that IBM infringed SCO's copyright by copying Unix source code into the open-source Linux operating system. IBM denies this. If SCO prevails and successfully enjoins IBM from using Linux, then there is little to stop SCO from proceeding in a similar fashion, and getting the same result against other Linux users, who, according to SCO's theory, are also improperly using the code IBM copied from Unix to Linux without authorization. Indeed, even though its litigation against IBM is in a very early stage, last month SCO filed similar lawsuits against DaimlerChrysler AG and AutoZone Inc. (see story).
The DaimlerChrysler suit involves the automaker's alleged violation of its SCO Unix operating system license. In December 2003, SCO sent a letter to its Unix licensees, including DaimlerChrysler, requesting that they provide SCO with written certification that they are in compliance with the terms of their Unix licenses. SCO's letter was seen by many as an attempt to gain a strategic advantage in its dispute with IBM. The letter said, among other things, that Unix licensees "must include" a statement indicating that the licensee "is not running any binary code that was compiled from any version of Linux that contains any copyrighted application binary interface code..." This, of course, goes to the dispute between SCO and IBM. DaimlerChrysler did not respond to the letter, and SCO's complaint concludes that "it would be irrational and contrary to [DaimlerChrysler's] self-interest" not to provide the certification unless it was also violating its Unix license.
SCO's suit against AutoZone, an auto parts chain with over $350 million in annual revenue, alleges copyright infringement based on AutoZone's use of Linux, which SCO contends contains "code, structure, sequence and/or organization" from Unix. In its responses to IBM's discovery requests, SCO asserted that IBM induced AutoZone to switch from using Unix to Linux.

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