The University of California at Berkeley has countersued Unix System Laboratories Inc in California’s Superior Court, charging it with false and misleading statements and unfair competition in violation of the California legal code. The school contends that contrary to their 1984 and 1989 4.2 BSD, 4.3 BSD and 4.3 BSD-Tahoe licensing pacts, Unix Labs failed to give its work proper credit and recognition or reprint its copyright in documentation and sublicences. The university also successfully pressed a motion to have portions of Unix Labs’s federal suit against it dismissed, based on the school’s claim of sovereign immunity as an agency of the state of California. As a result, Unix Labs’s federal charges of unfair competition, misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract against Berkeley, brought a year ago (CI No 1,980), have been dropped. The school is still facing charges of copyright infringement and violations of the Lanham Trademark Act in the federal courts. Unix Labs must now decide whether to press the charges that have been dropped from its complaints at the state level. It claimed that the Berkeley motion was simply a tactical legal manoeuvre to get the case against it moved from New Jersey to a friendlier state court back home in California. Berkeley’s suit asks the California court to rule that it is not in breach of its 1978 licensing agreement with Unix Labs for Unix 32V, the ancestor of Berkeley’s Net 2, as Unix Labs charged in the crux of its complaint in federal court. Unix Labs also claimed that Berkeley has never complained before about not getting proper credit or recognition and said that all of its attempts to settle its litigation against Berkeley have been rebuffed. In an attempt to court public opinion, especially with the technical crowd hostile to AT&T Co, Berkeley has released a copy of its suit against Unix Labs on the Internet. Unix Labs maintains that it will continue to prosecute its case against the school as well as its spin-out Berkeley Software Design Inc, with the full support of its new owner, Novell Inc. Although the Berkeley suit was drawn up this June and served in July, it makes no mention of Novell, which acquired Unix Labs on June 14. It refers to Unix Labs only as a subsidiary of AT&T.
