Maybe SCO had a point [LWN.net]

Maybe SCO had a point

Posted Aug 22, 2003 7:15 UTC (Fri) by josh_stern (guest, #4868)
Parent article: Maybe SCO had a point

Too many people here sound like they have half bought into
SCO's crazy legal theories. We've all heard endless blah,
blah, blah from SCO about their strict confidentiality
contracts governing their secret Unix codebase. So if
it turns out that they had such a contract with SGI, and
an SGI employee, acting as a representative of SGI,
violated that contract and submitted SYSV source to the
Linux kernel tree, by what stretch of the imagination
are the Linux developers, distributors, and users liable for
that misappropriation? It's not as if they have access to
the proprietary secret code to check it. It's not as if
SCO is cooperating in pointing out any problem area.
What is the plausible standard for due diligence on
copyright that is out of compliance here? One can't
possibly check copyright against someone else's confidential
secret.

(Log in to post comments)

Maybe SCO had a point

Posted Aug 22, 2003 7:57 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Excellent point. Now take a look at this as well (U.S. Copyright Office on copyright notices):

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.html

Search for "error in name" on that page (instance #2) which reads:

-----------------------------------------
Error in Name

When the person named in the notice is not the owner of copyright, the error may be corrected by:

1. Registering the work in the name of the true owner;
or

2. Recording a document in the Copyright Office executed by the person named in the notice that shows the correct ownership. Otherwise, anyone who innocently infringes the copyright and can prove that he or she was misled by the notice and obtained a transfer or license from the person named in the notice may have a complete defense against the infringement.
-----------------------------------------

SCO should take it up with IBM, SGI and whoever else. Otherwise, your point is an excellent example of common sense and the above confirms that.