Court To IBM: Show SCO the CodeCourt To IBM: Show SCO the Code

SCO Group has won a small legal victory in its lengthy battle with IBM over open-source intellectual property. In a ruling handed down yesterday in Federal District Court in Utah, Judge Brooke Wells ordered IBM to provide SCO with source code for Big Blue's AIX and Dynix operating systems. SCO has long sought that software, which it intends to examine in hopes of finding code it believes infringes on its copyrights.

The 2-year-old case was kicked off in March 2003, when SCO filed a complaint alleging that Big Blue infringed SCO's copyright by duplicating a portion of Unix System V in IBM's versions of AIX, Dynix and Linux. SCO also charged IBM with contract violations and misuse of trade secrets in an overall package with a potential for up to $3 billion in damages. SCO subsequently tacked on $2 billion in additional copyright-infringement claims.

SCO's legal weapon is its claim that it owns the copyrights to Unix System V, and that portions of that operating system have illegally found their way into Linux. (SCO says it acquired the rights to Unix from Novell, which bought those rights from AT&T.)

There hasn't been much movement in the case in recent months, and it's not expected to come to trial before November 2005. While the ruling buoyed SCO's stock price today on Wall Street, the company won't necessarily be better positioned for trial unless it can find infringing code. IBM has until Feb. 11 to comply with the court order to produce the code.

"SCO is pleased with the court's order, and we look forward to obtaining this important discovery so we can continue with our preparation for trial," SCO spokesman Blake Stowell says.

IBM officials weren't available for comment at posting time.