Novell is taking The SCO Group to task over the latter's legal claims over Unix and against Linux software.
Novell on Wednesday said it never transferred the copyrights and patents of Unix System V when it sold the software to SCO in 1995. SCO claims all Unix flavors in use today are based on Unix System V, and that it owns the software code and licensing rights to that software.
Novell, however, said SCO is apparently aware it lacks these copyrights and patents because over the past few months SCO has "repeatedly asked Novell to transfer the copyrights to SCO, requests Novell has rejected," Novell's CEO and President Jack Messman wrote to SCO's President and CEO Darl McBride.
Novell included the entire text of that letter, along with additional comments, in a press release issued Wednesday.
SCO launched an initiative in January called SCOsource to more aggressively enforce the licensing of its Unix software. That initiative led to SCO's $1 billion lawsuit against IBM in March and to later SCO allegations that Unix code it owns has been illegally copied into the Linux operating system kernel.
SCO's McBride disputed Novell's claims on Wednesday during a conference call to discuss SCO's quarterly earnings, saying SCO's attorneys have reviewed the 1995 sales contract and have concluded there is no doubt SCO owns the aforementioned copyrights and patents.
McBride aknowledged SCO initially found confusing language in the 1995 sales contract and approached Novell to clarify the matter. Initially, the Novell executives he talked to agreed the language was confusing, but some higher-ups later came back and said Novell owned the said patents and copyrights, an assertion SCO disagreed with, McBride said.
In a statement, SCO responded to Novell on Wednesday saying it owns "contract rights" to Unix and that its lawsuit against IBM doesn't involve patents or copyrights but rather breach-of-contract allegations.
"Contracts are by order of magnitude more powerful than copyrights or patents" in the legal arena, McBride said in the conference call.
While SCO isn't waging a copyright or patent fight regarding its Unix intellectual property, it's confident it would win such a battle in court, McBride said.
SCO said it has the contractual right to "prevent improper donations of UNIX code, methods or concepts into Linux by any UNIX vendor" and that it intends to "protect and enforce" all of the company's contracts with its more than 6,000 licensees.
"Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers. Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights," SCO said in its response.
SCO recently struck up a licensing deal with Microsoft for SCO's Unix software. That deal raised eyebrows, since it brought together two of the most disliked companies among Linux backers. Microsoft executives have said that Linux software has become a significant challenger to Microsoft products.
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