SCO Loses a Round in Court

Computerworld - A Michigan judge last week threw out most of the claims made by The SCO Group Inc. in a Linux-related lawsuit that it filed against DaimlerChrysler AG in March.
A spokesman for the Circuit Court for the County of Oakland, Mich., said Judge Rae Lee Chabot granted DaimlerChrysler's motion for a summary judgment dismissing the suit, except for a charge that the automaker didn't respond quickly enough to a request from SCO for certification that it was complying with a Unix license agreement.
DaimlerChrysler argued in court that it filed the necessary certification in April even though company officials didn't think it was required to do so, since it hadn't used the software covered by the Unix license with SCO for more than seven years. "We're pleased with the judge's ruling, and we look forward to finally resolving the one open issue," said DaimlerChrysler spokeswoman Mary Gauthier.
SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said the Lindon, Utah-based vendor is reviewing its legal options based on the judge's decision. He added that the lawsuit could have been avoided if DaimlerChrysler had responded to SCO's request for a compliance certification within the allotted 30 days. "It's a little unfortunate that it took a lawsuit for them to respond to what was a real simple letter asking them to certify," he said.
DaimlerChrysler is one of two Linux users that SCO has sued as part of its legal campaign against backers of the open-source operating system. The other user is automotive parts retailer AutoZone Inc., which is accused of running versions of Linux that contain Unix code copyrighted by SCO .
Jeffrey Norman, a software lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago, said the ruling in the DaimlerChrysler case has essentially squashed SCO's efforts to convince Linux users that they could face legal consequences if they ignore its requests for compliance certifications. "I think that strategy has failed," Norman said.
"The judge just sort of saw through what SCO was doing, particularly its public comments around copyright violations," said Dion Cornett, an analyst at Chicago-based Decatur Jones Equity Partners LLC. "SCO hasn't provided any evidence out there to convince IT managers that Linux violates its intellectual property rights."
DaimlerChrysler didn't respond to SCO's certification request until after the vendor had filed its lawsuit. But in court filings submitted in April, DaimlerChrysler argued that it had "provided SCO with the only certification required under the license" between the two companies.
The filings referred to two letters dated April 6 that were sent to SCO. Oneof the letters said that DaimlerChrysler was no longer using the software, which originally was licensed under a 1990 agreement between Chrysler Motors Corp. and Unix System Laboratories Inc. In the other letter, DaimlerChrysler CIO Susan Unger said that SCO had no right to seek such a certification in the first place.