IBM Drops Counterclaim Against SCO

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

12 October 2005

IBM last week announced that it has dropped several counterclaims against the SCO Group in the long-running dispute between the two over the Linux operating system.

The legal wrangle began in early 2003, when SCO accused IBM of allowing sections of its UNIX code to be used in the development of Linux.

IBM countersued, arguing that SCO was in breach of the General Public License which governs opens source software, and accusing the firm of infringing on IBM's own intellectual property.

One of IBM's patent counterclaims was dropped last year, and IBM told Utah's District Court last week that it will not pursue the remaining three patent claims.

In court documents, IBM's legal team explained that:

"While IBM continues to believe that SCO infringed IBM's valid patents, IBM agreed to withdraw its patent counterclaims to simplify and focus the issues in this case and to expedite their resolution. The little discovery that SCO has produced regarding IBM's patent claims makes clear that there is insufficient economic reason to pursue these claims. Since SCO's sales have been, and are, limited, a finding of infringement would yield only the most modest royalty or award of damages and would not justify the expense of continuing prosecution of these claims."

However, the firm went on to reveal that it still intends to pursue eight remaining counterclaims.

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