SCO 'who owns Linux' suit crushed yet again

From the «SCO sux» department:
Feed: www.theregister.com - Articles
Title: Ancient ‘Who owns Linux?’ case now has one foot very deep in the
grave
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2026 23:50:19 +0000
Link: https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/08/24/ancient-who-owns-linux-case-now-has-one-foot-very-deep-in-the-grave/5291513

Image[1]

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.
®

Links:
[1]: https://image.theregister.com/?imageId=260653&width=800 (image)