The lawsuit, filed in the State Court of Utah, cites
misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair
competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleges that IBM
made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value
of UNIX to benefit IBM's Linux services business.
UNIX originated at Bell Labs in 1969. It evolved with many
versions being provided by various companies, universities, and
individuals, becoming the first open operating system that could be
amended or improved by anyone. The operating system is widely used
in workstations. Linux is a UNIX derivative that was designed to
give PC users a free or very low-cost operating system comparable
to the more expensive UNIX systems, although its use in the
business environment is growing.
There are intellectual property rights in UNIX – and a company
with which SCO merged, called Caldera, purchased significant parts
of them in 1995, including source code, source documentation,
software development contracts, licenses and other intellectual
property that pertained to UNIX-related business, including IBM as
a UNIX distributor.
IBM originally entered into a UNIX license agreement with
AT&T in February 1985 in order to produce the AIX operating
system. SCO then acquired the rights. The agreements required that
IBM hold the UNIX software code in confidence, and prohibited
unauthorised distribution or transfer. But SCO alleges that IBM
gave the rights away to Lunux – albeit SCO itself sells Linux as
one of its main products.
"SCO is in the enviable position of owning the UNIX operating
system," said Darl McBride, president and CEO of SCO. "It is clear
from our stand point that we have an extremely compelling case
against IBM. SCO has more than 30,000 contracts with UNIX licensees
and upholding these contracts is as important today as the day they
were signed."
A copy of SCO's complaint can also be found at:
www.sco.com/scosource/complaint3.06.03.html
Other documentation is available at:
http://www.sco.com/scosource/
