Senior company executives and legal counsel leading the case on Monday announced special licensing they claimed would indemnify Linux customers from facing an IBM-style legal action.

Customers running Linux will be offered a UnixWare 7.1.3 runtime license for systems based on version 2.4.x of the Linux kernel or higher, or risk facing action in what – as of yesterday – officially became a case of copyright infringement.

Company chief executive Darl McBride said yesterday SCO has in recent weeks received copyright registrations for Unix System V source code. SCO is obliged by US law to formalize its claims in copyright to pursue the case further through the courts.

McBride also revealed his company is in talks with unnamed large vendors in Japan, following a recent visit there, as potential licensees for SCO’s Unix. Any such deals would follow a contract signed with Microsoft Corp and an extension to Sun Microsystems Inc’s license in February.

SCO’s actions appear designed to place pressure on IBM in court. SCO could, conceivably, point to customers and vendors who are licensing its Unix as proof of the validity of its claims.

The company’s actions are also geared toward turning SCO into a copyrights and patents house, capable of generating sustainable business on top of regular product sales. SCO would, ironically, be following in the footsteps of companies like IBM. McBride predicted income from IP would be larger than the product side for now.

McBride said: We are growing up with the IP side of the business. We looked at the large vendors out there who have IP shops [like IBM]. We are layering that on.

He added having been granted copyrights the legal fairways we are dealing with have got a lot wider.

One legal observer, though, said SCO was simply attempting to squeeze royalties from companies who are unwilling to risk litigation in a sensitive area like licensing. Anupam Chander, visiting professor at Cornell Law School and professor of law at University of California, Davies, said: Some people are afraid… and will pay what ever it is.

SCO wrote letters to 1,500 major customers of Linux earlier this year, advising they seek legal advise in case they may be breaking SCO’s IP. Yesterday, SCO announced they could buy a UnixWare 7.1.3 runtime license to maintain compliance. Pricing has yet to be worked out, but McBride promised a volume discount.

He added SCO developed the program in order to use its claimed legal rights carefully and judiciously while ensuring customers do not need to rip-out Linux software.

SCO’s legal counsel David Boies, of Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP, added customers who do not sign-up face possible legal action. If people do not come forward and this is not resolved, there will be the possibility of case by case litigation, Boies said.

Chander, though, encouraged customers to resist signing SCO’s UnixWare 7.1.3 license and instead support IBM during its case. SCO is exploiting FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt]. I encourage people to stand their ground and not pay this thing, he said.

SCO is challenging what McBride called literal copies of System V, derivatives of System V and literal copies of System V system structures and sequence procedures. SCO is also targeting distributions of Linux running later versions of the Linux kernel.

McBride claimed version 2.2.x and 2.5.x scaled to 32- and 64- way processors through Symmetrical Multi-Processing capabilities taken from System V.

Source: Computerwire