IBM has filed new documents in its legal dispute with Unix vendor The SCO Group, accusing SCO of having no evidence to back up its copyright infringement claims, and asking the judge to throw a major component of the case out of court. "For more than a year, SCO has made far-reaching claims about its right to preclude IBM"s (and everyone else"s) Linux activities," wrote IBM in documents filed with the United States District Court for the District of Utah on Tuesday. "Despite SCO"s grandiose descriptions of its alleged evidence of IBM"s infringement, SCO now effectively concedes that it has none."
SCO has been unable to provide any evidence of copyright infringement during the discovery phase of the trial and the court should therefore render a summary judgement against SCO, IBM"s filings say. In March 2003, SCO filed a multibillion dollar lawsuit against IBM, accusing it of violating SCO"s Unix intellectual property. SCO accused IBM of unfair competition, breach of contract, and of violating SCO"s trade secrets. In late Feb. 2004, it dropped the trade secret allegations in the case, but added a claim that IBM had violated SCO"s Unix copyright.