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The company alleges that 'AutoZone violated SCO's UNIX copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system that contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization from SCO's proprietary UNIX System V code in violation of SCO's copyrights.'

SCO is also seeking damages for AutoZone's 'infringement' for an amount to be proven at trial.

The long expected suit comes on the day of SCO's quarterly financial announcement. This is some weeks past its self-imposed deadline of 90 days within which it said it would sue a Linux end user that had declined to sign up to its Unix IP licence for Linux.

Initial speculation centred on Google being the likely target, as it uses hundreds of Linux servers to run its massive search engine. However, the SCO CEO Darl McBride said recently that the first suit would not be against a technology company. According

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to reports, this suite will be the first of many against Linux end users.

SCO's PR Director Blake Stowell told us: 'There were a number of potential companies that had the same characteristics as Autozone that we could have gone for. They certainly received some of the letters sent to the Fortune 1000 companies warning them of the issues we have with Linux. We've taken steps to talk to them over their use of Linux and ultimately we wanted to resolve this without having to go to litigation.'

AutoZone, a Fortune 500 company, is a major auto parts retailer in the US. It is not known whether the company will be taking advantage of the legal funds made available to Linux users by the Open Source Development Labs to defend against such litigation.

It did however sign up with Red Hat in 1999 to provide consulting and support services throughout its chain of stores. Red Hat offers its own indemnity program as part of its Open Source Assurance Program. This includes an Intellectual Property Warranty, by which Red Hat will replace any infringing code identified should it be found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code.

The program also gives access to the Open Source Now Fund, set up in August. This is to help customers defend against action 'associated with litigation related to the development of software under the GPL or other open source license'.

SCO says it will reveal more detail during a conference call later today.