17 August 2004 Computer giant IBM has filed a 100-page report with the US District Court requesting the dismissal of its intellectual property infringement case against The SCO Group.

In the court filing submitted last week by IBM, it stated: “Although SCO for months perpetuated the illusion that it had evidence that IBM took confidential source code from Unix System V and ‘dumped’ it into Linux, it has become clear that SCO has no such evidence.”

SCO, which provides software solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, has stood by the assertion that IBM ‘stole’ its Unix code since it filed its case.

IBM claims its contract with AT&T, which originally owned Unix, granted it rights to use and distribute portions of the code.

IBM also argues that SCO has undermined its own claims by continuing to distribute Linux software – including products that allegedly contain infringing code – until as recently as two weeks ago.

Finally, the motion cites an analysis of the disputed portion of code. IBM claims that an analysis of the code by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) “concluded that such code does not contain any portion of source code from Unix System V, and is not substantially similar to any source code in Unix System V.”

It turn, SCO argued that IBM’s most recent filing appeared to suggest that the 1985 Unix software agreement provided less intellectual property protection than if no contract had been written at all.

SCO has recently suffered setbacks in its Linux legal crusade. At initial court hearing In July 2004, the judge dismissed most of its case against DaimlerChrysler.

Links:
SCO loses hearing to DaimlerChrysler (23 July)