SCO Successor Xinuos Asks Court to Rehear Its Claims Against IBM/Red Hat Over Project Monterey

The useful part

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 [25 years ago], 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.

How it works

• 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.

Details worth keeping

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. So perhaps this matter is now close to a final resolution. Back in 2000 Slashdot interviewed one of the presidents of SCO.