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February 14, 2006

IBM asks court to throw out most of SCO’s claimed evidence

IBM Corp has asked the court hearing its breach of contract defense against SCO Group Inc to throw out the majority of SCO's claimed evidence against it, maintaining that 201 of SCO's 294 examples fail to identify any misuse.

By CBR Staff Writer

Lindon, Utah-based SCO provided the court with a list of 294 examples of IBM contributing Unix code to Linux in late December, meeting a court imposed deadline to disclose with specificity all allegedly misused material identified to date.

In its latest filing with the court, IBM has maintained that SCO has failed to do that for 201 of its 294 examples, and asked the court to limit the scope of SCO’s claims to the remaining 93.

For 201 of the 294 items, SCO does not provide enough particularity even to identify the versions or line numbers for the allegedly misused material, wrote IBM in the memorandum supporting its motion.

In fact, no versions, files or lines of Unix System V code are identified; no versions, files or lines of Dynix or AIX code are identified as misused; and no specific versions or lines of Linux code are identified. For these 201 items, SCO comes nowhere near close to providing the information that IBM needs to defend itself and that the Court ordered SCO to provide, it added.

SCO originally sued IBM in 2003, claiming that Linux contained code from its Unix System V code base, but backed away from misappropriation of trade secrets claims against IBM in favor of breach-of-contract claims.

SCO claims that all Unix code developed by Unix System V licensees should be considered a derivative of Unix System V according to its reading of AT&T Corp’s original licenses. IBM disagrees and previous Unix System V owner Novell Inc supports its view.

In filing its evidence under court seal in December 2005, SCO claimed that the filing reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code, from Unix and Unix-derived technologies in order to enhance the ability of Linux to be used as a scalable and reliable operating system.

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In asking the court to throw out 201 of SCO’s claimed items of evidence, IBM maintained that the lack of detail is prejudicial against it and makes it practically impossible for IBM to defend itself within the current court schedule.

IBM added that a delay would be inappropriate, however, accusing SCO of gamesmanship. The resolution of this case should not be delayed further to provide SCO yet another opportunity, IBM told the court. It has had more than enough opportunity to comply with the Court’s orders… In short: enough is enough.

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