The lawsuit, filed in the State Court of Utah, cites misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleges that IBM made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of UNIX to benefit IBM's Linux services business.
UNIX originated at Bell Labs in 1969. It evolved with many versions being provided by various companies, universities, and individuals, becoming the first open operating system that could be amended or improved by anyone. The operating system is widely used in workstations. Linux is a UNIX derivative that was designed to give PC users a free or very low-cost operating system comparable to the more expensive UNIX systems, although its use in the business environment is growing.
There are intellectual property rights in UNIX – and a company with which SCO merged, called Caldera, purchased significant parts of them in 1995, including source code, source documentation, software development contracts, licenses and other intellectual property that pertained to UNIX-related business, including IBM as a UNIX distributor.
IBM originally entered into a UNIX license agreement with AT&T in February 1985 in order to produce the AIX operating system. SCO then acquired the rights. The agreements required that IBM hold the UNIX software code in confidence, and prohibited unauthorised distribution or transfer. But SCO alleges that IBM gave the rights away to Lunux – albeit SCO itself sells Linux as one of its main products.
"SCO is in the enviable position of owning the UNIX operating system," said Darl McBride, president and CEO of SCO. "It is clear from our stand point that we have an extremely compelling case against IBM. SCO has more than 30,000 contracts with UNIX licensees and upholding these contracts is as important today as the day they were signed."
A copy of SCO's complaint can also be found at:
www.sco.com/scosource/complaint3.06.03.html
Other documentation is available at:
http://www.sco.com/scosource/