SCO moves to dismiss Red Hat lawsuit

IDG News Service - In the latest round of its ongoing Linux legal fight, The SCO Group Inc. filed a motion late yesterday asking a judge to dismiss a pending suit by Red Hat Inc.
In its motion filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, SCO contends that Red Hat's grounds for its lawsuit are baseless, in part because Red Hat is seeking to defend its open-source Linux operating system against a nonexistent legal challenge from SCO.
"Red Hat's legal action does nothing more than seek general guidance for the marketplace as to the legal rights SCO has with respect to Linux software," the Lindon, Utah, company said in its motion. "This is an impermissible use of the Declaratory Judgment Act."
Unix developer SCO launched a legal battle in March when it hit IBM with a lawsuit, and the company is now seeking at least $3 billion in damages. SCO claims that IBM illegally used the Unix operating system, owned by SCO, to build its Linux source code.
IBM strongly denied the charges in a countersuit, saying it hadn't misappropriated any trade secrets, engaged in unfair competition, interfered with SCO's Unix contracts or breached any contractual obligations to SCO.
SCO aggressively followed up its lawsuit against IBM in May with an open letter, posted on its Web site and sent by mail to about 1,500 large companies, warning that any group persisting in the use of Linux could be subject to intellectual property suits. SCO also drew heavy criticism from the Linux community when it announced plans to charge licensing fees to companies that use Linux.
Part of the backlash against SCO came last month when Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat filed a formal complaint asserting that its technologies do not infringe on SCO's intellectual property and accusing SCO of attempting to discredit Linux and harm those promoting the free open-source software. Red Hat's suit asked for a declaratory judgment from the district court that SCO's claims regarding copyright infringement are untrue. Red Hat also asked the court to hold SCO accountable for "unfair and deceptive actions."
In its motion for dismissal, SCO said Red Hat wasn't defending itself against legal action -- because SCO hasn't filed any lawsuit against Red Hat -- but rather was trying to defend itself against SCO actions that are in themselves protected by law, including the First Amendment.
"Further, any governmental interest served under the Lanham Act is heavily outweighed by fundamental governmental interests in protecting copyright interests, ensuring full and free access to courts, providing litigation immunity, promoting judicial economy and fairness in litigation, and safeguarding freedom of speech and the press," the motion said. "Red Hat's real motive for filing suit against SCO was to somehow vindicate the entire Linux industry."
A spokesman for SCO said its move was simply a logical response to an unwarranted lawsuit. "We're just denying the things that Red Hat has claimed in its complaint," said Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman. "It's never been our intention to sue Red Hat, and we have no plans to do that."
Representatives from Red Hat couldn't be immediately reached for comment.
Robert McMillan in San Francisco contributed to this report.