IP News

SCO Sues End Users in Battle for LINUX Rights

SCO sued end users for the first time in its battle over LINUX by initiating suits against AutoZone, Inc. and Daimler Chrysler AG. The battle over LINUX, an open source operating system, began when SCO, inheritor of UNIX copyrights from the breakup of AT&T, accused IBM of distributing confidential UNIX code into the open source LINUX community. SCO previously initiated lawsuits against IBM, Novell, and Red Hat for contributing to and distributing the allegedly infringing LINUX. Last year, SCO sent letters to LINUX end users, alerting them to the potential liability of continuing to use LINUX without a license to SCO's intellectual property rights. However, few major companies have requested licenses, with the exceptions of Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, fueling speculation that Microsoft is funding SCO's legal battles.

SCO filed a copyright infringement suit against AutoZone in federal court in Nevada, alleging that AutoZone ran versions of LINUX that contained proprietary UNIX code without permission. In contrast, SCO sued Daimler Chrysler AG in Michigan state court for breach of contract, alleging that by using LINUX to run virtual test crashes, Chrysler used UNIX code outside the scope of a license Chrysler had for UNIX. SCO further alleges that Chrysler breached the agreement by contributing UNIX proprietary source code to LINUX. The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), a group devoted to promoting open source software, will make its $10 million legal fund available to all SCO targets, including AutoZone and Chrysler. OSDL has advised most end users to wait to see how the cases involving IBM, Novell and RedHat turn out before they begin requesting licenses.

USPTO Rejects Eolas Patent, Jeopardizes $521 Million Award Against Microsoft

As a result of a re-examination, the USPTO preliminarily rejected the patent central to the lawsuit between Eolas and Microsoft. Last August, a jury determined that Microsoft infringed Eolas' patent for embedding interactive elements, called applets, into Web sites, and awarded Eolas $521 million in damages. Microsoft appealed the decision, but planned to make changes in its Internet Explorer as a result of the award. While the jury award was a victory for Eolas, many in the Internet community felt that the technology was already in use prior to the patent filing. The Director of the World Wide Web Consortium petitioned the USPTO to begin a Commissioner initiated re-examination of the patent and to invalidate the patent based on prior art. In November 2003, the USPTO granted the petition and agreed to re-examine the patent, a rare move. The USPTO has only conducted 151 Commissioner initiated re-exams since 1988, despite having issued nearly 4 million patents since that time. The initial office action from the re-examination rejected Eolas' patent over the prior art, citing, among other things, a seminal paper describing embedded technologies on the Internet. While encouraging to Microsoft, this determination is by no means final. Eolas may respond to the Office Action and has several more levels of review available.

SCO Sues End Users in Battle for LINUX Rights

SCO sued end users for the first time in its battle over LINUX by initiating suits against AutoZone, Inc. and Daimler Chrysler AG. The battle over LINUX, an open source operating system, began when SCO, inheritor of UNIX copyrights from the breakup of AT&T, accused IBM of distributing confidential UNIX code into the open source LINUX community. SCO previously initiated lawsuits against IBM, Novell, and Red Hat for contributing to and distributing the allegedly infringing LINUX. Last year, SCO sent letters to LINUX end users, alerting them to the potential liability of continuing to use LINUX without a license to SCO's intellectual property rights. However, few major companies have requested licenses, with the exceptions of Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, fueling speculation that Microsoft is funding SCO's legal battles.

SCO filed a copyright infringement suit against AutoZone in federal court in Nevada, alleging that AutoZone ran versions of LINUX that contained proprietary UNIX code without permission. In contrast, SCO sued Daimler Chrysler AG in Michigan state court for breach of contract, alleging that by using LINUX to run virtual test crashes, Chrysler used UNIX code outside the scope of a license Chrysler had for UNIX. SCO further alleges that Chrysler breached the agreement by contributing UNIX proprietary source code to LINUX. The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), a group devoted to promoting open source software, will make its $10 million legal fund available to all SCO targets, including AutoZone and Chrysler. OSDL has advised most end users to wait to see how the cases involving IBM, Novell and RedHat turn out before they begin requesting licenses.

USPTO Rejects Eolas Patent, Jeopardizes $521 Million Award Against Microsoft

As a result of a re-examination, the USPTO preliminarily rejected the patent central to the lawsuit between Eolas and Microsoft. Last August, a jury determined that Microsoft infringed Eolas' patent for embedding interactive elements, called applets, into Web sites, and awarded Eolas $521 million in damages. Microsoft appealed the decision, but planned to make changes in its Internet Explorer as a result of the award. While the jury award was a victory for Eolas, many in the Internet community felt that the technology was already in use prior to the patent filing. The Director of the World Wide Web Consortium petitioned the USPTO to begin a Commissioner initiated re-examination of the patent and to invalidate the patent based on prior art. In November 2003, the USPTO granted the petition and agreed to re-examine the patent, a rare move. The USPTO has only conducted 151 Commissioner initiated re-exams since 1988, despite having issued nearly 4 million patents since that time. The initial office action from the re-examination rejected Eolas' patent over the prior art, citing, among other things, a seminal paper describing embedded technologies on the Internet. While encouraging to Microsoft, this determination is by no means final. Eolas may respond to the Office Action and has several more levels of review available.