The Lindon, Utah-based Unix vendor claims that it has details of 217 separate improper disclosures where IBM has contributed code to Linux, allegedly in breach of contracts between the two companies, and/or in violation of SCO’s copyright.
SCO filed a five-page document with the Utah District Court outlining its claims, as well as a sealed spreadsheet detailing the disclosures, meeting a court imposed interim deadline of October 28.
According to the filing, some of these wrongful disclosures include areas such as an entire file management system; others are communications by personal working on Linux that resulted in enhancing Linux functionality by disclosing a method or concept from Unix technology.
The filing continued: The numerosity and substantiality of the disclosures reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code, from Unix-derived technologies in order to enhance the ability of Linux to be used as a scalable and reliable operating system.
The use of the phrase Unix-derived could be significant. SCO originally claimed back in 2003 that Linux contained code from its Unix operating system 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. Novell has also challenged SCO’s assertion that it is the owner of Unix copyrights.
AT&T sold the Unix System V code to Novell in 1993, with Novell selling it to the Santa Cruz Operation Inc in 1995 along with its UnixWare business. That operating system and services business was then sold to Caldera in May 2000 before the company changed its name to SCO Group and launched its lawsuit against IBM.
While the evidence now claimed by SCO remains secret, at its SCO Forum event in August 2003 SCO said that it had identified 1.1 million lines of Unix code from 1,549 files in the Linux operating system.
That including: 46 files and 109,688 lines of code for RCU, 101 files and 56,587 lines of code for NUMA, 44 files and 32,224 lines for JFS, 173 files and 119,130 lines for XFS, and 1,185 files and 829,393 lines for SMP.
Despite that and many other public assertions of evidence, SCO’s latest court filing is the first to detail its claims against IBM with any specificity. The final deadline for evidence is December 22, while a five-week jury trial is not scheduled to begin until February 26, 2007.
