The Oakland County Circuit Court in Michigan yesterday afternoon granted car giant DaimlerChrylser a motion to dismiss most of SCO’s case, which alleged the manufacturer hadn’t certified with SCO the right to use the Unix operating system.
SCO, claiming ownership of the Unix operating system, sent letters to 3,000 companies last December requesting they certify their copies of Unix. Organizations had a 30 day period to respond.
A spokesperson for DaimlerChrylser said: We are pleased with the decision of the judge and are looking forward to resolving the remaining issues.
Rather than see the dismissal as a failure, SCO said the action served its purpose, claiming DaimlerChrylser had refused to certify compliance according to the deadline.
After we filed, DaimlerChrylser decided to certify their compliance, SCO’s spokesperson said.
However, with yesteday’s dismissal the prospect has evaporated for SCO receiving any software royalities from DaimlerChrysler in the aftermath of this case. The auto giant said it hasn’t used the software that was the subject of SCO’s December letter for seven years, adding the company’s license was with AT&T Information Systems, not SCO.
SCO is attempting to build a profitable business based on royalites obtained from charging customers who are running Unix code found in Linux products. SCO belives code from its UnixWare V operating system has been illegally copied to Linux.
According to DaimlerChrylser all that remained now to be settled are damages over the question of the length of time it took the car manufacturer to respond to SCO’s original letter. SCO, meanwhile, has been granted some limited discovery to determine why the DaimlerChrylser took so long to certify compliance.
