SCO drops old suit against IBM, but claims copyright infringement instead

SCO made a two-step shuffle in a Utah court room on Friday, dropping its claims against IBM of misappropriating its trade secrets and adding a claim of copyright infringement. The court met to discuss whether SCO had met a court order to provide IBM with the documentation it requested to build its defence. IBM's lawyer told the court 'SCO abandons any claim that IBM misappropriated its trade secrets, concedes that SCO has no evidence that IBM improperly disclosed UNIX System V code, and acknowledges that SCO's contract case is grounded solely on the proposition that IBM improperly disclosed portions of IBM's own AIX or Dynix products, which SCO claims to be derivatives of UNIX System V. ...more

SCO's Linux claims cast in fresh doubt

SCO's Linux licensing efforts look set to go up in smoke, as a revelatory email that claims 'no evidence of any copyright infringement' was found in a 1999 comparison of UNIX and Linux code. SCO's suit against IBM now includes $3bn of copyright damage, but this is put down to IBM's continuing its AIX business, subsequent to SCO pulling IBM's Unix licence. What the email does appear to destroy is SCO's campaign against Linux, claiming that the operating system contains Unix copyright code, and its efforts to extract licence fees from Linux users in respect of continued use of this code. ...more

Microsoft to unveil new Internet communications kit

Microsoft will introduce new hardware later today designed to connect the workplace phone to email, instant messaging, real-time presence information, conferencing, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and mobile communications. Together with nine leading manufacturers - Asustek, GN, LG-Nortel, NEC, Plantronics, Polycom, Samsung, Tatung and Vitelix - the company will unveil 15 new devices at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2007. These are designed to work with the recently released Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 public betas. ...more

Real attacks Apple QuickTime claims

A war of words breaks out over media player downloads. Apple's original claims that the number of QuickTime downloads exceeded those of rivals RealPlayer and RealOne have been described as 'misleading' by RealNetworks. Apple announced last week that there were 80 million downloads of QuickTime Player in 2001 as opposed to 75 million of RealPlayer and RealOne. ...more

Ofcom shies away from the break up of BT

Ofcom has backed away from the break up of BT in its Strategic Review of Telecoms instead it is proposing a new `regulatory contract` which will provide a proper framework for competition in the future. Under the latest Phase 2 of its strategic review of telecoms, the regulator admits that 20 years of regulation has not provided the healthy and dynamic market in fixed line telecoms that the architects of privatisation envisaged. Instead, it catalogues a history of slow product development, inferior wholesale products, poor transactional processes and lack of transparency. ...more