SCO Group finally posts its litigation-records Web site

SCO Group has finally made public the Web site it promised last fall.SCO.com/scoip/ purports to be “The Right Place for SCO Intellectual Property Information.”

The site consists of a front page plus links to sections containing the legal filings and court orders involving the five current and past intellectual property lawsuits (vs. IBM, Novell, AutoZone, DaimlerChrysler and Red Hat). Not all legal events have links to documents, however.

SCO Group’s $5 billion lawsuit against IBM is due to be in court in November. There are dozens of legal affidavits stored there, going back to the inception of the case in March 2003.

DaimlerChrysler, which hadn’t used Unix System V code for more than seven years when it was surprised by the SCO lawsuit that accused the automaker of using Linux systems that included SCO’s proprietary Unix code, saw the case thrown out by a Michigan judge last summer. DaimlerChrysler proved that it had indeed complied with the original license (signed with AT&T years ago) by certifying its use of Unix System V code with SCO Group on April 6, 2004, 11 weeks before Michigan Judge Rae Lee Chabot’s dismissal of the case on July 21.

The SCO complaint against AutoZone was put on hold by a Nevada court last fall, pending the outcome of the IBM case. SCO Group contends on the site that “AutoZone violated SCO’s UNIX copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system that contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization from SCO’s proprietary UNIX System V code in violation of SCO’s copyrights.”

The Novell and Red Hat cases are still entangled in legal maneuvering by SCO Group lead attorney David Boies. Groklaw.net offers an exhaustive look at SCO Group’s litigation, including links to many legal documents and a great number of comments from readers.