IBM has denied SCO Group"s allegations that it misappropriated Unix trade secrets, but Big Blue isn"t giving hints about what its eventual strategy will be for battling the lawsuit.
In an 18-page filing in U.S. District Court in Utah, IBM said SCO Group"s four formal charges are unfounded, denied the truth of dozens of SCO allegations, and accused SCO of trying to slow the work of the open-source community. SCO sued IBM in March, alleging that Big Blue had misappropriated SCO"s Unix trade secrets by moving them into the open-source Linux operating system. SCO Group, a Lindon, Utah-based company still in the process of changing its name from Caldera International, is the inheritor of the Unix intellectual property initially developed at AT&T.
"While IBM has endeavored to support the open-source community and to further the development of Linux, IBM has not engaged in any wrongdoing," Big Blue said in its response, filed Wednesday. "Contrary to Caldera"s unsupported assertions, IBM has not misappropriated any trade secrets; it has not engaged in unfair competition; it has not interfered with Caldera"s contracts; and it has not breached contractual obligations to Caldera." IBM also accused SCO of trying, in the suit, to interfere with the open-source community, which develops Linux and many other software packages. SCO is seeking "to hold up the open-source community (and development of Linux in particular) by improperly seeking to assert proprietary rights over important, widely used technology and impeding the use of that technology by the open-source community," IBM said.
But IBM"s strategy for battling the lawsuit, which seeks more than $1 billion, doesn"t make an appearance in Big Blue"s filing. "It"s in some senses disappointing because we would have liked to have learned what IBM"s true defenses are going to be," said John Ferrell, an intellectual property attorney at Carr & Ferrell.