IBM Responds To SCO With Countersuit
from the sue-and-get-sued dept
IBM took their time (even waiting for Red Hat to come into the battle), but now they've responded to the SCO lawsuit and filed a countersuit. In the countersuit they make a few different claims. First, they turn the whole thing around, and say that SCO is violating their intellectual property. I find intellectual property lawsuits, like this, to be pointless anyway, but if one side is going to sue over it, then why not the other side? Basically, it's just an argument of "that was my idea!" "No, it was mine!" - which I don't think does anything to push the industry forward. More interestingly, they've picked up on the defense that many people have suggested: since SCO has been selling Linux under the GPL, it would seem that they had clearly given up any proprietary rights to whatever was in the code. The only way for them to say they hadn't, wouldn't be for them to admit they didn't even know what they were selling, which is not a particularly believable argument. Finally, they also continue to assert that SCO cannot withdraw their AIX license, and that, in saying they did, SCO is interfering with IBM's business. All this really is, of course, is positioning for a potential settlement. IBM is basically trying to show SCO's position as being weak, so that should a settlement happen, IBM has the upper hand.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Settlement?
Between IBM's counter-suit, Red Hat's suit and the likelihood of other suits (inevitable shareholder suits after SCOX shares drop below the price they were at when they announced the suit) SCO is going to get run out of business.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]