Brian E. Ferguson is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the international law firm McDermott, Will & Emery. He specializes in intellectual property litigation and counseling.
Anyone reading this is likely aware of The SCO Group's claim to intellectual
property (IP) rights in the Linux kernel. SCO hired legal guru David Boies
(who prosecuted the government's case against Microsoft) and initiated a
two-pronged litigation and marketing attack.
To recap: in March 2003 SCO sued IBM for breach of its software agreements
with SCO, misappropriation of SCO's trade secrets in Unix, and wrongful
dissemination of those trade secrets via IBM's contributions to open source
and Linux. In May, SCO wrote to 1,500 of the world's largest companies,
asserting that Linux infringes SCO's IP rights and that end users may face
legal liability from the use of Linux. In July, SCO registered for copyrights
in its Unix-based systems, and in August announced the availability of a $699
per CPU system "license" for Linux end users "to cure the SCO IP infringement
iss... (more)
Brian E. Ferguson is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the international law firm McDermott, Will & Emery. He specializes in intellectual property litigation and counseling.
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