August 6, IBM filed counterclaims against SCO. The two most important counterclaims relate to the Linux GPL license and patent violation by SCO.
IBM wants monetary damages and an injunction stopping SCO from shipping its software. Below we cite a few of the most powerful counterclaims presented by IBM:
"1. These counterclaims arise from SCO's efforts wrongly to assert
proprietary rights over important, widely-used technology and to impede the use of that technology by the open-source community. SCO has misused, and is misusing, its purported rights to the UNIX operating system developed originally by Bell Laboratories, then a research and development arm of AT&T Corp., to threaten destruction of the competing operating systems known as AIX and Linux, and to extract windfall profits for its unjust enrichment.
"2. IBM's counterclaims also arise from SCO's infringement of
IBM patents. Although SCO purports to respect the intellectual property rights of others -- and has instituted litigation against IBM for alleged failures with respect to SCO's purported rights -- SCO itself is infringing no fewer than four IBM patents."
"16. SCO accepted the terms of the GPL by modifying and distributing Linux products. By distributing products under the GPL, SCO agreed, among other things, not to assert--indeed, it is prohibited from asserting--certain proprietary rights (such as the right to collect license fees) over any source code distributed under the terms of the GPL. SCO also agreed not to restrict further distribution of any source code distributed by SCO under the terms of the GPL"
Four SCO software packages UnixWare, OpenServer operating systems, SCO Manager remote administration tool and its Reliant HA package violate four of IBM's patents.
”The patents cover a data compression technique, a method of navigating among program menus using options arranged in a graphical tree, a method for verifying that an electronic message was received and a method for monitoring computing systems linked in a cluster.”
LWN.net: The text of IBM's counterclaims
CNET: Big Blue files counterclaims against SCO
Comment:
”In 2002, IBM received 3,288 U.S. patents from the USPTO. This is the tenth consecutive year that IBM has received more U.S. patents than any other company in the world.”
IBM's home page: Intellectual Property and Licensing
