Big Blue seeks to pooh-pooh SCO suit

IBM is seeking a judicial judgment absolving it from any claims of copyright infringement against Linux antagonist the SCO Group.

The request appears in an amended counterclaim Big Blue filed on Tuesday in its legal battle with SCO, whose main claims allege IBM violated contract provisions by distributing Linux products that illegally incorporate Unix code that SCO controls.

The filing in US District Court in Salt Lake City includes a new counterclaim in which IBM seeks a declaratory judgment ruling that "IBM does not infringe, induce the infringement of or contribute to the infringement of any SCO copyright through its Linux activities, including its use, reproduction and improvement of Linux, and that some or all of SCO's purported copyrights in Unix are invalid and unenforceable".

The document also drops one of IBM's claims of patent infringement by SCO, regarding IBM's patent for a "method of navigating among programs using a graphical menu tree," which the company originally claimed had been incorporated into SCO products.

SCO last week filed a motion seeking to split the patent claims into a separate case.

Representatives from IBM and SCO declined to comment on Tuesday's filing, which responds to an amendment SCO filed in late February.

David Becker writes for News.com