Lawyers from LinuxTag sent a letter to SCO on May 23rd saying that SCO must "desist from unfair competitive practices." The group sent the letter in response to an SCO missive, sent to 1,500 companies, that warned of potential consequences from using Linux.

LinuxTag demanded that the German SCO subsidiary retract its claims regarding ownership of the Linux kernel code by May 30th or make its evidence public. "SCO must not be allowed to damage its competitors by unsubstantiated claims, to intimidate their customers, and to inflict lasting damage on the reputation of GNU/Linux as an open platform," said LinuxTag's Michael Kleinhenz.

"SCO needs to stop claiming that the standard Linux kernel violates its copyrights, or they need to lay the evidence for their claim on the table," he added.

SCO Response

LinuxTag filed its request in German court. Under German law, fines can be levied against SCO if it does not provide substantiation for its claims -- or retract those claims -- by the date specified.

In response, SCO initially removed copies of its letter from its Web site. But when LinuxTag obtained a restraining order, SCO decided to take down its entire German site as a precaution.

Claims Victory

LinuxTag spokesperson Andreas Gebhard told NewsFactor that his group has received no response directly from SCO. He said he does not expect LinuxTag to take any further action.

"In Germany, we have achieved our purpose," he said. "They are no longer allowed to say they have the intellectual property rights on the Linux kernel."

SCO representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Continuing Case

The legal confrontation between LinuxTag and SCO is the latest development in a dispute that began with SCO's US$1 billion lawsuit against IBM, which alleges that Big Blue misappropriated code from Unix copyright holder SCO. IBM has denied the charges.

To support its case, SCO has said it will show the Unix source code it has found in Linux. It has announced plans to show the code to industry experts who sign nondisclosure agreements. The code will not be available to the public.

Novell Development

Complicating the case, Novell, one of the companies which owned rights to Unix prior to SCO, last week claimed that it still owns the intellectual property rights to Unix.

According to Novell, the 1995 agreement governing SCO's purchase of Unix from Novell does not grant SCO the associated copyrights.

SCO has disputed Novell's claims, stating that it did indeed purchase full intellectual-property rights to Unix, including patents and the right to enforce those patents. SCO has said that it is preparing to settle its dispute with Novell in court.

Novell's claims are merely "an attempt to make itself relevant and to look like they're still a top-tier player," Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio told NewsFactor. She said that SCO's claim of owning the full copyright to Unix has merit.

SCO vs. IBM

The decision by famed attorney David Boise to represent SCO in its lawsuit against IBM lends credence to its case, according to DiDio. "He doesn't have to take this on for publicity's sake," she pointed out. "It's safe to say he wouldn't be touching this thing if he didn't think it had merit."

Furthermore, "the fact that Microsoft immediately signed up and licensed [Unix] from SCO" also adds credibility, she said. Microsoft's licensing agreement with SCO could also be seen as "a shot across IBM's bow," DiDio added.