Both companies met this week’s deadline for summary judgment motions in the three-year-old lawsuit with a flurry of filings, and 10 motions for summary judgment or relief are now available on the Pacer filing system.

IBM took the opportunity to ask District Judge Dale Kimball to bury the case once and for all, filing four motions that would dismiss all of SCO’s claims against it, as well as two motions to confirm its claims that SCO infringed its copyright and that it has not infringed SCO’s copyright.

SCO, meanwhile, filed a motion for partial summary judgment on one of its claims: that IBM is in breach of contract between AT&T and Sequent (with SCO the successor to AT&T and IBM the owner of Sequent).

SCO also filed two motions for summary judgment against eight of IBM’s 11 remaining counterclaims, as well as a motion for relief for IBM’s spoliation of evidence, the latter of which throws some light on SCO’s recent claim that IBM destroyed evidence it could have used to support its case.

While the memorandum supporting SCO’s motion for relief was not available as Computer Business Review went to press, the motion’s asks the court for an order precluding IBM from contesting that it relied on AIX and Dynix source code in making contributions to Linux development.

SCO also asked the court to throw out IBM’s counterclaims related to the Lanham Act, unfair competition, intentional interference, and unfair and deceptive trade in one motion, as well as the breach of the GPL, promissory estoppel, and copyright infringement in another.

The latter matter, IBM’s eighth counterclaim, is also the subject of a motion for summary judgment from IBM and revolves around SCO’s intellectual property licensing activities. IBM claimed SCO breached its copyright in violation of the GPL by offering its intellectual property license.

SCO maintains that the license was for Unix code, not Linux code, and as such it is not in breach of the GPL, although it referred to the license as the Intellectual Property License for Unix as opposed to the Intellectual Property License for Linux it was actually known as.

SCO also repeated its claim that it had never repudiated the GPL, despite declaring the license unenforceable, void and/or voidable in an October 2003 court filing in which it also claiming that the GPL violated the US Constitution.

In its motion for summary judgment on its eighth counterclaim, IBM maintained that SCO has failed to identify any code allegedly owned by SCO and copied by IBM into Linux.

Elsewhere, IBM has moved for judgment against SCO’s breach of contract claims, maintaining that the agreements between the two do not preclude it from disclosing its own works and that it had actually been encouraged to do as it wished with the code by AT&T.

On SCO’s copyright claim related to IBM ignoring SCO’s termination of its Unix licenses for AIX and Dynix, IBM maintained that the lack of evidence for breach of contract meant the termination was unjustified, while SCO has failed to disclose its evidence for copyright infringement.

IBM also filed for summary judgment on SCO’s claims of unfair competition, and interference with contract and business relationships.

Assuming the many motions for summary judgment do not cause a delay, a settlement conference is scheduled for January 30, 2007 with a five-week jury trial scheduled to begin on February 26.

In the highly unlikely event that the judge grants all motions for summary judgment, all that would be left would be IBM’s counterclaim that SCO is in breach of contract, IBM’s request for declaratory judgment on non-infringement of copyrights, and IBM’s request for a declaratory judgment in IBM’s favor.