University of Brasilia: The SCO x IBM + Linux Case, Under Historical View

“To understand what lurks behind the legal case SCO brought
against IBM, and its implications for the future of our societies,
we have to know two things: a little of Unix history and what has
been construed as intellectual property in software.

“Starting with the latter, one begins by distinguishing
copyrights from patents. Copyrights are commercial rights for the
protection of intellectual work against unauthorized use. In this
case, a programmer’s source code. And patents are legal rights for
the protection of inventions, granting the inventor exclusivity
rights to explore his or her invention.

“The key point here is that the spirit of these laws have become
irrelevant. The fact that granted rights are limited in time or
scope for the purpose of striking some social balance, has been
obfuscated by sophistry in repeated extensions gained through
appropriate lobbies. (i.e. Diamond vs. Deihr, the test case for
Sonny Bonno law, etc.)

“SCO’s CEO was quoted in news services on may 29 as having said:
‘we have the contractual right to block improper use of code,
methods and concepts from Unix into Linux.’ To make sense of
what he says, one has to know what are the things he claims and
names ‘methods and concepts’ from Unix, and put them in the proper
context…”

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