[wplug] SCO's Response to RedHat
Russ Schneider
russpgh at stargate.net
Tue Aug 5 15:25:47 EDT 2003
Statement Regarding Red Hat Lawsuit and Letters to Red Hat
Monday August 4, 6:46 pm ET
LINDON, Utah, Aug. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The following statement
is being issued by The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News):
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990421/SCOLOGO )
SCO has consistently stated that our UNIX System V source code and
derivative UNIX code have been misappropriated into Linux 2.4 and 2.5
kernels. We have been showing a portion of this code since early
June.
SCO has not been trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt to end
users. We have been educating end users on the risks of running an
operating system that is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. Linux
includes source code that is a verbatim copy of UNIX and carries
with it
no warranty or indemnification. SCO's claims are true and we look
forward to proving them in court.
Recent correspondence from SCO to Red Hat further explains SCO's
position.
The first letter is from Bob Bench, CFO of The SCO Group, Inc., to
Mark
Webbink, Sr. Vice President and General Counsel of Red Hat, Inc., that
SCO intended to send to Red Hat. After a conversation between Matthew
Szulik and Darl McBride, Red Hat determined that SCO did not need
to send
this letter.
The second letter is one that was sent to Matthew Szulik today
from Darl
McBride after Red Hat's lawsuit was filed.
July 31, 2003
Mark Webbink, Esq.
Sr. Vice President and General Counsel
RED HAT, INC.
1801 Varsity Drive
Raleigh, NC 27606
VIA FACSIMILE: (919) 754-3700
Dear Mr. Webbink:
This letter is in response to yours of July 18, 2003 to Darl McBride,
President and CEO of The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO").
Before responding to your request, it is important to place your
letter
in context. Your letter follows on the heels of Red Hat's S-3
filing of
July 7, 2003, in which your company revised its risk disclosure
statement.[1] In addition, SCO is currently engaged in litigation
with
International Business Machines Corporation ("IBM") regarding its
role in
the development of the Linux operating system. At the time of your
letter, we had expected the possibility of a global resolution of
SCO's
intellectual property claims against all Linux-related companies that
would have likely included Red Hat. This effort has apparently
stalled,
through no fault of SCO.
Based on the posture of our litigation and your revised risk
disclosures,
it is unclear to us the purpose of your July 18, 2003 letter. If you
desire to enter good faith discussions to address SCO's intellectual
property claims against Linux, either on behalf of a wider
consortium of
Linux companies or solely on behalf of Red Hat, we are willing to meet
with you for that purpose. In any such meeting, we will provide
example
after example of infringement of our intellectual property found in
Linux. Of course, any such demonstration must be pursuant to an
acceptable confidentiality agreement and must be intended to
further good
faith discussions about resolving the differences between us.
If you seek information for the purpose of informal discovery
intended to
benefit IBM in the pending litigation, or for the purpose of devising
your own litigation plans against SCO related to Linux, we must
respectfully decline your request. Therefore, please clarify in
writing
the purpose for your request. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Robert Bench
Chief Financial Officer
The SCO Group, Inc.
[1] Red Hat states in the revised disclosure that it is "vulnerable to
claims that [its] products infringe third-party intellectual
property
rights particularly because [its] products are comprised of
distinct
software components many of which are developed by independent
parties." The revised risk disclosure continues: "[M]uch of
the code
in [Red Hat's] products is developed by independent parties
over whom
we exercise no supervision or control ... [and Red Hat's] lack of
access to unpublished software patent applications, copyright
registrations which fail to adequately disclose source code, and
numerous issued software patents that are of dubious validity ...
Claims of infringement could require us to seek to obtain licenses
from third parties in order to continue offering our products, to
reengineer our products, or to discontinue the sale of our
products
in the event reengineering could not be accomplished on a timely
basis."
August 4, 2003
Matthew J. Szulik
CEO
RED HAT, INC.
1801 Varsity Drive
Raleigh, NC 27606
Dear Matthew,
Attached is the letter I discussed with you during our July 31, 2003
telephone conversation. Instead of actually sending the letter, I
thought it was best to telephone you and speak in person to see if we
could resolve the issues between our companies short of
litigation. We
left the conversation with a preliminary agreement to meet and
continue
our discussions further.
To my surprise, I just discovered that your company filed legal action
against The SCO Group earlier today. You, of course, mentioned
nothing
of this during our telephone conversation. I am disappointed that you
were not more forthcoming about your intentions. I am also
disappointed
that you have chosen litigation rather than good faith discussions
with
SCO about the problems inherent in Linux.
Of course, we will prepare our legal response as required by your
complaint. Be advised that our response will likely include
counterclaims for copyright infringement and conspiracy.
I must say that your decision to file legal action does not seem
conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux.
Yours truly
Darl C. McBride
President & CEO
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