Unix warriors lack evidence

08.08.2006
Remember The SCO Group, the company that is in a battle against IBM? The company has certainly taken on a formidable foe.

But SCO professes to be a Unix warrior, a great defender of proprietary software. While SCO hasn't dominated headlines of late, the company is still armed and dangerous.

This is the company that drew its sword in 2003 by launching a multibillion dollar lawsuit against IBM over alleged misappropriation of Linux source code. The case has taken a few unexpected turns since then, but a trial date has been set for February 2007.

Only last month a judge tossed out almost 200 of The SCO Group's claims of intellectual property violation against IBM on the grounds that SCO didn't identify the alleged infringements in enough detail. This is a key problem in this case; there hasn't been enough detail or evidence to support a claim worth billions of dollars.

SCO responded by arguing it had identified "methods and concepts" that were misappropriated by IBM.

Forgive me for asking, but a claim worth this amount of money deserves more than vague concepts. Last year US District Court Judge Dale Kimball said SCO's inability to provide evidence to support its case is astonishing, adding there was a vast disparity between SCO's public accusations and its actual evidence.