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SCO Has "Made No Decision" On Linux IP Claims
Earlier today, a Slashdot post reported the possibility that SCO would attempt to collect royalty payments for intellectual property that SCO (according to that story) claims would make other Linux vendors liable to the tune of nearly $100 per Linux-running CPU.
This report on NewsForge reports that SCO has issued a statement "disputing the claims in the story, but confirming that it does have significant asset claims in Unix IP and it is discussing 'possible strategies.'" Awfully ambiguous on SCO's part; I'd feel better about a straight denial.
For the benefit of those who are to lazy to read the (fine) story... SCO statement on Client Server News story On January 10, 2003 Client Server News published a story concerning SCO and its UNIX intellectual property. This article states as fact speculations about what SCO may do or not do with regard to its ownership of core UNIX IP. Darl McBride, president and CEO of SCO, has discussed SCO's UNIX IP ownership in many public venues and on the most recent quarterly investors' conference call. SCO has significant UNIX intellectual property dating back to the company's purchase of AT&T's Bell Labs UNIX technology. Our UNIX IP is a significant asset and for several months we have been holding internal discussions, exploring a wide range of possible strategies concerning this asset. We've reached no final decisions on any course of action. SCO is a Linux vendor and a leading member of United Linux. Contrary to the claims in the Client Server News article, SCO has no desire to take legal action against fellow Linux vendors. As a normal part of business, SCO has had discussions with several legal experts in the field of intellectual property law, and these discussions included David Boies. Contrary to the claims in the Client Server News story, SCO has not engaged Mr. Boies to take legal action against our fellow Linux vendors. It's unfortunate when a publication runs a headline, stating as fact in the present tense that our company is engaging in certain activities when, in fact, we've made no decisions, formed no programs and announced nothing about this.
They were. It is. They changed their name to "The SCO Group" because of the perceived popularity of the "SCO" name.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
There are patents on all kinds of wacky things like the setuid bit. SCO has a collection of these that are automatically licensed when someone starts with the original UNIX source base but could be used in a lawsuit if someone tried to make something "UNIX like" without licensing UNIX. So it's basic UNIX concepts that are the sticking point here since Linux is "UNIX like" but not a UNIX and not based on any older UNIX code like *BSD.
I may be wrong but AFAIK this is a FOLLOW UP to a previous story.
./, they are part of the charm, but them getting modded up irks me.
In story 1 there was an artical saying that SCO would possibly be going to charge $96 for each linux CPU.
in story 2(this one) there is a denial by SCO of the first story.
They could have both been put into the same artical but there is no problem with having seperate ones either
I don't mind inane comments on
Hmm, this kind of reminds me of the potentially ruinous case UK-Telco Monster British Telecom tried to bring by claiming they had a valid patent for the hyperlink, thus, every single web site covered by that patent would have to pay them a royalty.
Yep, that claim was soon chucked out of court, to the embarressed relief of BT's management.
SCO it seems, are either doing one of two things - either making a somewhat misguided attempt to enforce a perhaps long forgotten patent (and, as has been said, patent on what, exactly?) Or two, just making a real dumb grab for money (kinda like "If it's sitting still, you can hit it - if you can hit it you can kill it!")
I just hope they fail miserably. This kind of blatent money-grabbing the open source community can *well* do without!
-- Seamus
SCO is a Linux vendor and a leading member of United Linux. Contrary to the claims in the Client Server News article, SCO has no desire to take legal action against fellow Linux vendors. As a normal part of business, SCO has had discussions with several legal experts in the field of intellectual property law, and these discussions included David Boies. Contrary to the claims in the Client Server News story, SCO has not engaged Mr. Boies to take legal action against our fellow Linux vendors.
I mean, geez. What else are they supposed to do?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
So very wrong. If you were right, that would mean that I could write a GPLed program that reimplements the MP3 patent, and then tell Thompson Media that their patent is violating the GPL.
No, it's not the patent that's violating the GPL. The GPL only states that if you can redistribute the software freely because of a patent, then you can't redistribute it at all. The problem is that SCO is distributing Linux (Thompson is not distributing GPL MP3 software), so since it claims you can't redistribute it freely, they're not allowed to distribute it either, because of the GPL.
So esentially, if SCOs to proved to be correct, that would make the GPL invalid for those portions of code, and thus it would be free game for anybody to use the code. Then SCO could be free to grab the code and enforce their patents anyway, an effort must made easier by removing that pesky GPL.
No, the GPl says: If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. That's quite different than "the GPL doesn't apply is there's a patent".
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
And hoist MS on their own petard. Microsoft gave^h^h^h^h loaned money to Caldera to buy SCO to kill SCO. MS used to have a chair on SCO's board, and SCO had to use code done on Xenix coded by MS (when MS was the developer of Xenix) in all versions of SCO.
The EU made MS back off of that, then MS bailed out of SCO, then sent money Calderia's way. MS denied they did so for Caldera to buy SCO, but it didn't take long between Caldera getting the money and gobbling up SCO.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
SCO has two proprietary UNIX OSes (UnixWare, and OpenServer) and a Linux distribution, and they have essentially no inhouse development staff. In short, they haven't a prayer of actually competing.
Which is why they are considering this sort of a suicide tactic. They have nothing to lose.
A quick check of the USPTO searchable database turns up only TWO patents to SCO's name (Using SCO's name spelled out for the assignee name as the search criteria) and neither of the two seem to really apply to Linux in general.
Here's the link to the search request so you can see for yourselves
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
As the owner of UNIX, SCO probably has rights to a lot of patents from AT&T, USL, and Novell pertaining to UNIX. Those patents presumably wouldn't be recorded as being registered by SCO, even if SCO owns them now.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Certainly there's a theoretical argument that patents encourage research
They don't do much for research, but they do quite a bit for invention. If you take biotechnology, most of the basic research is done in academia. However, for the benefits of this research to reach consumers, someone has to go through the trouble of commercializing the results. Academics are paid simply to produce results, but companies need financial security. Thus, exclusivity on a product is given to promote bringing it to market in the first place. For the most part, this works well (at least in theory).
The problem now is that patents aren't just being applied to actual inventions. Companies (and universities!) now expect to get patents for simple old research results regardless of whether there's actually a commercially viable product in there. In the old days (~1985), Leroy Hood and his coworkers- all academics- invented the DNA sequencer, among other things. This was considered very risky research to be doing at a university back then. They immediately patented it, and Applied Biosystems has been selling them like crazy ever since. It's exactly how the system should work. Now, however, professors isolate some gene and immediately patent it. There's no beneficial product involved; they simply control all future research done with it. Hence Myriad Genetics and its BRCA1 patent. I imagine quite a few biotechs will never actually produce anything useful but will leech off others purely by litigation of their bullshit patents. That's legal, but it's not how the system is *supposed* to work.
(A former coworker is now working on a project that's of direct interest to us- we're both academic researchers. For reasons I can't begin to comprehend, his university is patenting the method, which is simply an algorithm. He's been a real asshole about this, and our response has pretty much been to ignore him. We're not going to reward that sort of crap, and frankly we think we can do a better job. FUCK his patent.)
Well, some patents were filed from the very start, for example the patent on the SUID bit, owned (at the time) by Bell Labs, inventor: Dennis Ritchie.
The assignee has to be changed when the IP rights change hands, otherwise it's still theirs. Any of the AT&T patents would most likely have expired and a rough check of the Novell patents doesn't seem to reveal much of anything applicable either.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"For example copyrights on specific music pieces in Europe expire and as such they are free to copy, but not in the US."
;-)
Point of order, here... yes, they *do* expire in the US. Trademarks don't (as long as you defend them), but the protections there are quite different, and music is not usually a trademark.
US copyrights may last significantly longer than European ones, but here's the current breakdown (from a flyer I picked up the other day in the public library). It gets pretty messy, because the laws have been changed so many times, but here goes:
Works created 1/1/1978 or after: Protection starts when work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression, expires after life of the creator + 70 years (or, if work is of corporate authorship, 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter).
Published before 1923: in public domain.
Published between 1923 and 1963: Protection starts when published with notice, expires after 28 years + optional 47-year renewal, which was later extended to 67 years. If not renewed, it's now in public domain.
Published from 1964-1977: Protection starts when published with notice, expires after 28 years + automatic 67-year extension.
Chreated before 1/1/1978 but not published: Protection starts 1/1/1978, expires after life of creator + 70 years or 12/31/2002, whichever is greater.
Created before 1/1/1978 but published between then and 12/31/2002: Protection starts 1/1/1978, expires after life of creator + 70 years or 12/31/2047, whichever is greater.
So it can be difficult to tell when things expire, but they do expire.
Not that this has anything whatsoever to do with patents, which is what the article was about...
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?