Judge Blasts SCO for Lack of Evidence

Today, a U.S. Federal judge berated Utah-based SCO group for failing to offer any "competent evidence" to substantiate its claims of that its controls the derivative works born out of UNIX System V. The statement came in a ruling brought on by a copyright infringement suit filed by SCO against IBM.

Despite being in agreement with the IBM's attorneys on the substance of the complaints, the judge rejected IBMs request to scrap key elements of the case.

SCO's legal crusade to protect its "trade secrets" began in 2003 when it claimed there had been a "misappropriation" of its code into Linux. Since that time, SCO has taken a large number of vendors to court including IBM, which it has sued for over $5 billion.

Major lawsuits have been filed against IBM, Red Hat, Novell, DaimlerChrysler, and AutoZone. The suits SCO filed against end-users are significant because they serve as a reminder of the ambiguity surrounding the use of open source software and its possible violation of proprietary intellectual property rights.

Leading open source advocates pointed to a Microsoft-SCO connection after Microsoft paid SCO to ensure compliance throughout its UNIX-related line of products.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) which created the General Public License (GPL), a license commonly used in open source, is seeking to address those concerns with a revision of the GPL that tackles licensing and patent issues.

IBM has led the charge to defend its customers against lawsuits by establishing an endowment fund to help fund the defense of Linux customers and challenging SCO in court.

Today, the judge ruled that IBM's request to dismiss portions of the case was premature, but IBM vowed to fight on and seek another dismissal. SCO has stated that it will reveal more "secret" evidence in court; in the meantime, IBM will continue to gather its own evidence.