SCO sues first Linux user, AutoZone

The SCO Group Inc. said Wednesday that it filed suit against Memphis-based auto parts chain AutoZone Inc. for violating SCO’s Unix copyrights through its use of Linux.

SCO has threatened to sue Linux users in the past, and is currently involved in Linux-related lawsuits with IBM Corp., Red Hat Inc., and Novell Inc. But until Wednesday, it had not launched legal action against a Linux customer.

The Lindon, Utah, company sued IBM in March of 2003, claiming that IBM illegally contributed SCO’s intellectual property to the Linux source code. It has since claimed that Linux contains code copied directly from the AT&T Unix software SCO acquired in 2000, and has warned Linux users they could be sued unless they purchase $699-per-server software licenses from SCO.

The suit against AutoZone, filed in the U.S. District Court in Nevada, asks for injunctive relief and damages to be determined in a trial.

Representatives for AutoZone were not immediately available to comment Wednesday morning.

SCO’s critics say that the company has yet to prove its case, and that SCO’s license, called the Intellectual Property License for Linux, amounts to little more than extortion.

In November, SCO claimed to be just 90 days away from launching a lawsuit against an end-user, but the deadline passed recently without a suit having been filed.The company was late in filing the suit because it had hoped to settle with customers before bringing litigation, said Blake Stowell, an SCO spokesman. “Our hope as a company was that litigation would be a last resort,” he said. “In the end, I think we took a little bit more time to work things through with customers rather than go ahead with litigation.

Though SCO is engaged in lawsuits with Linux distributors Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc., it has not sued either company over the alleged copyright violations. When asked why his company had decided to sue end users rather than Linux distribution vendors, Stowell said: “If we did that, in some cases it could really hurt Linux, which is not necessarily something we want to do as a company. … If you go and sue a Linux distributor, that could potentially hurt the Linux marketplace.”

“Frankly, the GPL pushes all of that liability to the end user,” Stowell added.

If Linux does illegally contain SCO’s copyrighted code, the company could have a copyright infringement case against Linux users, because users inevitably copy software when they use computers, said Jeffrey Neuberger, a partner with Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP, who has been following the case. “If you buy something preinstalled on your hard drive, you’re making a copy of that by installing your software into RAM,” he said.

Should SCO prove its case, the company could seek statutory damages that range anywhere from $200 per infringement to $150,000 per infringement, Neuberger said.

Lawsuits against Linux customers could also further SCO’s case against IBM, which was recently amended to include copyright infringement claims. “It’s sort of a classic way of putting a pressure on a company like IBM,” said Neuberger.

The suit could also create liabilities for SCO, he said. “If their lawsuit isn’t well founded, they could at a minimum be subject to sanctions,” he said. “If IBM feels that the SCO claim isn’t well founded, they could actually sue SCO for tortious interference”

SCO said that it would further discuss the AutoZone suit during its quarterly conference call scheduled for later Wednesday.