SCO hits reversal in Unix licence case with DaimlerChrysler

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 22 Jul 2004 at 16:15

US car giant DaimlerChrysler has all but won its case defending a suit from SCO surrounding its use of Unix.

In a hearing yesterday in an Oakland County Circuit Court in Michigan, Judge Rae Lee Chabot upheld most of DaimlerChrysler's arguments to dismiss the case, with the exception that SCO remained free to pursue the company over why it had failed to meet a deadline for auditing whether its use of Unix complied with its licence.

SCO said it 'is satisfied with the outcome of this litigation now that DaimlerChrysler has certified its compliance.'

As to following up the issue of the timeliness of DaimlerChrysler's response, it said it hadn't yet decided.

SCO set about DaimlerChrysler in March, as one of two flagship suits it launched against end-users of Unix and Linux. SCO claims its Unix intellectual property has been illegally incorporated into Linux and filed a suit against car spare parts company Autozone for its use of Linux, and against DaimlerChrysler for failing to provide information on its use of Unix.

DaimlerChrysler provided SCO with the information it had asked for in April, pointing out that it no longer used the software, and promptly filed a motion for dismissal.

Yesterday, the judge ruled that SCO had asked for information outside of the remit provided by the Unix licence, although DaimlerChrysler had yet to satisfactorily answer why it had taken so long to certify its compliance. However, without the prospect of being awarded damages for this argument it would seem unlikely that SCO is to pursue this further.

Jason Schultz, staff attoprney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: 'This is certainly a blow to SCO's ego and will almost certainly undermine its credibility among end users... it demonstrates the frivolous nature of SCO's complaints and the poor quality of their pre-litigation investigation.'

Last December, SCO sent out more than 3,000 letters to Unix licencees, giving them 30 days to certify they had complied with their software licences. Novell, the previous owner of the Unix platform, asserted it retained certain Unix rights that allowed it to act on behalf of SCO and called on SCO to take back its demands.

When DaimlerChrysler failed to certify within the 30 days, it was its name that appeared on suits SCO filed against companies that CEO Darl McBride described as 'at the head of two different classes of end users violating our rights.'

Quite what this means for others in the same 'class' is unclear, but if this was the best case SCO had against Unix users, the other potential defendants won't be quaking in their boots. Quite how many of them is also unclear. Yesterday SCO said that 'The vast majority of these licensees responded that they were still holding to the terms of their license,' yet when the suit was first announced in March, SCO's CEO Darl McBride had said that fewer than half had responded.