Meanwhile, SCO believes that all is not lost, despite admitting that six of its nine claims against IBM could be dismissed by the court in the light of the Unix copyright decision.

Both IBM and SCO have filed papers with the court giving their interpretations of what legal issues remain after US District Judge Dale Kimball decided that Novell was the owner of the Unix System V copyrights and had the right to waive SCO’s legal claims against IBM.

According to IBM, the impact on SCO’s legal claims is devastating. The Novell Decision effectively forecloses all of SCO’s claims [and] requires summary judgment in favor of IBM on several of its counterclaims and strengthens IBM’s remaining counterclaims, it stated.

Meanwhile, SCO admitted that the Order would constitute a basis upon which the Court could dismiss six of its claims, including the four core breach of contract claims and breach of copyright claim, as well as a tortuous interference claim relating to Novell’s waiver.

The company insists that it still has three claims against IBM: that the company engaged in unfair competition related to a Unix development agreement called Project Monterey; that it induced companies to breach licensing agreements with SCO; and that it interfered with SCO’s business relationships.

IBM believes that the court’s decision that Novell had the right to waive SCO’s claims against IBM undermines the central premise of these claims.

As for IBM’s counterclaims, it said that, based on the Novell decision, the court can decide in its favor that its Unix operating systems and Linux activities do not infringe SCO’s copyright, and that SCO breached the same contracts it had originally claimed IBM had breached.

IBM also stated that SCO’s defense on other counterclaims relating to copyright infringement, breach of the GPL and promissory estoppal – that it was justified due to IBM’s claimed breach of contract – is also undermined by the Novell decision.

According to IBM, the Novell decision also strengthens its claims related to the Lanham Act, unfair competition, interference, and violation of the New York trade practices act.

SCO, however, maintained that the Novell decision has no effect on IBM’s counterclaims. With regard to the issue of whether Linux infringes its copyrights, it maintained that it sill has a case related to Unix copyrights assigned to the company after 1995.

However, IBM insisted that nowhere in its Final Disclosures did SCO identify any post-1995 copyright allegedly infringed by IBM’s Linux activities.

Our View

While SCO insists that all is not lost, the company’s original claims against Linux are long gone. Claims that IBM misappropriated trade secrets by taking SCO’s own Unix code and contributing it to Linux were dropped in February 2004.

There remained the claim that IBM had breached its Unix contracts by contributing its own Unix code to Linux, but that was undermined by the ruling the Novell owned the Unix copyrights and could waive SCO’s claims relating to the Unix contracts.

There is still some way to go before the remaining issues are done and dusted, but as far as SCO’s core claims against Linux are concerned, the game appears to be over.