Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 23rd Jan 2008 07:02 UTC, submitted by SEJeff
On April 29, SCO will finally have its day in court, but not exactly in the way the Unix and Linux litigation company had planned. If things had gone the way SCO wanted, it would be facing IBM to see how much money it would get for IBM using Unix code in Linux. Instead of that fantasy coming true, SCO will be trying to hang on to what's left of its assets from Novell.
Permalink for comment 297337
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
2005-07-08
The SCO case was about copyright, not patents.
The bar for copyright infringement is higher than for patent infringement. Copyright covers the actual expression, so an infringing work must exhibit substantial similarity at the code level. Patents cover the idea or method, so an infringing work only needs to exhibit substantial similarity at the conceptual level.
Free software is on relatively firm ground in terms of copyright. The SCO case served as a good wake-up call, and now free software projects are more deliberate than ever with their copyright policies. However, free software remains quite vulnerable to patent suits.
EDIT: Sorry for "piling on".
Edited 2008-01-23 08:41 UTC