Ancient ‘Who owns Linux?’ case now has one foot very deep in the grave

The long legal battle over ownership of Linux is closer than ever to ending, after a panel of three judges ruled a claim against IBM and Red Hat isn't valid, and that time has expired for further action. This story starts in 1998 when IBM decided the world needed a single version of UNIX capable of running on multiple processor architectures. To make that happen, Big Blue allied with a company called the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) which made a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Intel and Sequent also signed up for the multi-architecture effort, called Project Monterey." The alliance didn't work, largely because Linux came along and delivered a *Nix that ran on multiple processors (and introduced a new way to develop software). IBM decided to add some of the code developed during Project Monterey to Linux, leading SCO and its legal successors to claim they owned that code and therefore had some sort of legal claim over Linux. That's quite a potential prize given that Linux runs in billions of devices. To understand why, consider that Huawei owns patents that earn it $0.50 for every device that uses its Wi-Fi 7 IP. If it's possible to score 50c for Wi-Fi alone, the royalties available from Linux could be rather more. In 2021, an heir to SCO settled with IBM for $14.25 million - a sum that reflects the fact SCO had for years failed to produce strong evidence to back its claims. Another of SCO's legal successors, Xinuos, filed a new claim that IBM should be on the hook because Big Blue knew it did not own the code it contributed to Linux but instead had a non-exclusive license to use it. Xinuos argued that when IBM contributed Project Monterey code to Linux, it breached that license. Xinuos eventually took that argument to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York - and failed to convince it that IBM and Red Hat had a case to answer. Xinuos appealed, and on August 10th the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided [PDF] not to revisit the District Court's decision, agreeing that the original legalese governing Project Monterey means it's too late to re-litigate the matter. The Appeals Court also agreed that Xinuos tried to frame the case as a licensing issue but failed, instead arguing that the issue was really about ownership. That ain't all, folks, because Xinuos intends to file a petition to have the case re-heard by the full bench of the Court of Appeals. That hardly ever happens, unless the court finds significant errors or major legal issues that make a rehearing worthwhile. Law firm Kaplan says the Second Circuit has allowed reviews of less than 0.03 percent of the cases it has handled. So perhaps this matter is now close to a final resolution. (R)