30 April 2004 DaimlerChrysler has filed to dismiss SCO Group’s law suit against it, claiming that it has not used SCO’s Unix operating system software for seven years. The company has never had a Unix licence from SCO, it adds.

SCO had launched the action after claiming that DaimlerChrysler had failed to provide it with a ‘certificate of compliance’, intended to demonstrate that it was abiding by the terms of its November 1990 Unix licensing agreement.

However, the car maker claims that it had. “DaimlerChrysler has provided SCO with the only certification required under the licence demonstrating that DaimlerChrysler is not even using and has not used the licensed software for more than seven years,” the company claimed in a court filing.

DaimlerChrysler’s Unix contract pre-dates the acquisition of the Unix intellectual property by Santa Cruz Operation, which was later sold to Caldera and the company subsequently renamed SCO Group. DaimlerChrysler’s November 1990 contract was with original owner Unix Systems Laboratories (USL), which was a subsidiary of Unix creator AT&T.

SCO Group’s law suit against DaimlerChrysler is part of a wider campaign against Linux. SCO claims that the open source operating system contains code copied from its own Unix intellectual property. It has also claimed that IBM wrongly donated Unix technologies from AIX to the open source community, a claim that IBM strongly refutes.

SCO and IBM are due back in court on Monday 3 May in the latest round of their $3 billion legal fight.