SCO's lawyers scoop $9mn, take aim at Linux

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 18 Nov 2003 at 13:45

SCO has announced a pay out for its lawyers, shelling out $1mn in cash and 400,000 shares, as well as an 'expanded arrangement' to pursue its Linux licensing initiatives.

Recent news reports have suggested legal firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner - SCO's lawyers representing the company in its suit against IBM - will get a 20 per cent cut of settlements resulting from the IBM case.

However, the deal has become much clearer: SCO will now take a $8,956,000 charge in the fourth quarter for the cash and stock deal with its lawyers.

'We look forward to continuing our work with SCO to protect the Company's important and valuable intellectual property rights,' said David Boies, Managing Partner, Boies, Schiller & Flexner.

In a teleconference yesterday, Boies said that such a package was 'not unusual but not unique,' but that 'his firm does not have this kind of investment in any other software company.'

But it looks like the legal troops are still hungry. They will be deployed on the Linux front too, again with a 20 per cent pay deal. Darl McBride, CEO of SCO said that the recent investments in the company and the legal troops set out, SCO was 'fully stocked to go after those [Linux] enforcement issues'.

He said the first case may be just arounsd the corner: 'We'll be seeing in the near term the identification of a significant user that has not paid the licence, within the next 90 days.'

This is clearly a change of heart for SCO - barely a month ago the company decided it would halt its programme of invoicing commercial Linux users. PR Director Blake Stowell told us at the time the company was, 'very satisfied with the way things are going, so it's not something we feel we need to do at this point.'

McBride couldn't explain the inconsistency of his company's approach - saying the company had always intended to pull companies that declined the Linux licence through the courts at some point.

See also:

SCO halts Linux invoices