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Tue Jun 4 12:25:35 MDT 2013


<span style="font: bold 12px times new roman, times, serif;"><p style="font: bold 12px times new roman, times, serif;">By <B>DON CLARK</b>
<br><span style="font: bold 10px times new roman, times, serif;"><B>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL</B></span><br>
</p>
</span>   <p class="times"><b>Microsoft</b> Corp. has agreed to buy
rights to Unix technology from <b>SCO Group</b>
Inc., a boost to SCO's controversial campaign to exact royalties for a
predecessor to the Linux operating system.</p>
<p class="times">No financial terms were disclosed in the deal, announced Monday, under
which Microsoft will license SCO's Unix patents and underlying technology
called source code. But Microsoft's move suggests that the software
company's lawyers view SCO's patents as important, and could encourage
other companies to strike similar pacts.</p>
<p class="times">SCO also says it recently reached another licensing agreement with a
major technology vendor it hasn't identified. "The deals we've signed so
far are significant contracts," said Darl McBride, SCO's chief
executive.</p>
<p class="times">Unix was invented by <b>AT&T</b> Corp. in the 1960s. Most
major computer vendors later licensed and adapted the software. <b>Novell</b> Inc. bought the technology
in 1992, and in 1995 sold it to SCO, which was already selling a version of
Unix for computers that use <b>Intel</b> Corp. chips. Caldera Systems
Inc., a vendor of Linux software, bought the bulk of SCO's operations in
2001 and recently changed its name to SCO.</p>
<p class="times">In recent years, Unix has been supplanted on Intel-based server machines
by Linux, a free offshoot of Unix that was refined by a cadre of volunteer
programmers. SCO contends that those programmers -- deliberately or
accidentally -- borrowed major chunks of Unix code. To protect what it
regards as its intellectual property, SCO hired the law firm Boies,
Schiller & Flexner, whose lead attorney, David Boies, played a major
role in the government's antitrust case against Microsoft.</p>
<p class="times">In March, SCO sued <b>International
Business Machines</b> Corp., accusing the computer maker of violating
a contract associated with a joint development project with SCO, and
transferring SCO trade secrets to the Linux community. IBM has denied the
charges. Last week, SCO suspended shipments of its own version of Linux,
calling the operating system an "unauthorized derivative" of Unix that
could subject future customers to liability, though it promised not to sue
existing users.</p>
<p class="times">Linux backers have reacted angrily, stating that SCO hasn't identified
any offending parts of the software. SCO says doing that would let
programmers change the software to hide evidence of copying. "That's like
saying, 'show us the fingerprints on the gun so you can rub them
off,' " Mr. McBride says.</p>
<p class="times">Microsoft competes fiercely with both Unix and Linux. But the company
was a longtime minority stockholder in SCO before Caldera took over the
Unix business. Indeed, some people in the Linux community have speculated
that Microsoft is secretly bankrolling SCO's litigation to help slow the
Linux threat.</p>
<p class="times">A Microsoft spokeswoman flatly denied that Microsoft is helping SCO's
legal efforts. She said it opted to buy a license from SCO to make sure its
products can exchange data with Unix software without violating any
patents.</p>
<p class="times">After IBM, the biggest company backing Linux is <b>Hewlett-Packard</b> Co. Mr. McBride
and an H-P spokeswoman declined comment about whether H-P is the
unidentified licensee SCO has discussed.</p>
<p class="times"><b>Write to</b> Don Clark at
<a class="times" href="mailto:don.clark at wsj.com">don.clark at wsj.com</a><sup>1</sup></p>
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				<p class="article"><i>Updated May 19, 2003 8:11 a.m.</i></p>   <!-- art_debugthis: ...found PG_ID
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