A legal row is brewing around the University of California at Berkeley AT&T code-free Unix BSD 4.3 and 4.4 operating system releases, resulting in Unix System Laboratories Inc filing a complaint with the New Jersey Federal Court against Berkeley Software Design Inc, an independent company in Falls Church, Virginia that uses the BSD software as the basis for commercial products. According to today’s edition of our sister paper Unigram.X, the complaint alleges false advertising in violation of Section 43(a) of the Langham Act and unfair competition in violation of state laws. The crux of the complaint is Berkeley Software’s statement that no licence from AT&T is required for the company’s BSD/386 product (CI No 370), or for any product derived from the BSD 4.3 Networking Release 2 code from the University of California at Berkeley. Berkeley Software has filed a motion to dismiss the claim, saying that Unix Labs has failed to provide any basis for its allegations. It has not, says Berkeley Software, claimed the violation of any proprietary rights, such as patent rights, trade secrets or copyrights, saying that that’s because it has no proprietary rights to violate with respect to the Networking Release 2 code. Unix Labs however is talking very much in those terms, saying that it believes there is AT&T code within the Berkeley Software product, and that it will protect its proprietary rights in all cases. Unix Labs said it was evaluating its position with regard to the University of California at Berkeley but has nothing to say as yet.
