SCO and Linux: The legal rights and wrongs
Published: 29 Sep 2003 12:50 BST
New technology always causes legal grey areas.
The history of the computer industry proves that things eventually do get straightened out, but not before companies are forced to find their way through a prolonged period of uncertainty. That's certainly the case in the current dispute that pits the SCO Group against the Linux community, says Stuart Meyer, an intellectual property partner with Fenwick & West.
Meyer, who specialises in such grey areas, worked on the Napster case in addition to a well-publicised copyright spat between Borland and Lotus in the 1990s.
In an interview with CNET News.com, Meyer said that if the court upholds SCO's claims, it could present troubling liability questions for the companies that use, develop or sell Linux. But he cautions against any rush to judgment, noting that it's not at all clear whether SCO has full ownership over the code in question.
Q: What do you make of Hewlett-Packard's decision to indemnify customers that use Linux?
A: Many times, you will hear lawyers say the biggest practical concern for businesses regarding the law is uncertainty. People don't really care what the law is. People can work with whatever legal regime they find out about. If an area of the law is unsettled, it is very difficult for companies to do business planning. Obviously, these companies (like HP) want to promote a technology that has some uncertainty around it. They want to remove some of that uncertainty.
Do you think others, such as IBM and Dell, will follow suit?
You've got Sun Microsystems and HP offering to indemnify. Yeah, there's a big incentive for other people to follow suit.
What are some of the issues on which the SCO case hinges?
You've got this existing legal regime around software, which is the proprietary model.
There is certainly a chicken-and-egg issue that needs to be resolved. Basic ownership issues are up in the air in that case. The premise in an intellectual property claim is that the person bringing the action actually owns the intellectual property in question. In many cases, that is not in dispute at all. Here, there's been a chain of ownership [that is less clear], some of which has involved some open-source licences at least related [to the intellectual property in question].
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