Now in its 35th year, the decades-long legal battle over Linux ownership is closer than ever to an end. Three U.S. appeals court judges reportedly ruled that the lawsuit against IBM and Red Hat had no legal basis and that the deadline for further legal action has expired register.
The story begins in 1998, when IBM concluded that the world just needed a version of the UNIX operating system that could run on different processor architectures. To this end, the company developed a version of UNIX on the x86 architecture together with Santa Cruz Operations (SCO), and Intel and Sequent signed an agreement to implement so-called UNIX. Project Monterey, can’t compete with Linux. Therefore, IBM decided to port some of the code created during the Monterey Project to Linux, after which SCO and its legal successors claimed that the Linux code somehow belonged to them and to some extent belonged to the operating system’s rights.
2021 TSG Group, representing the interests of a number of institutions and individuals who had been involved in SCO, reached a $14.25 million settlement with IBM. This amount shows the SCO’s lack of strong evidence rather than the success of the lawsuit sponsor. Another successor, Xinuos, filed a new lawsuit holding IBM liable because it allegedly used Linux code that it did not own, knowing that IBM only had a non-exclusive license to use it. Xinuos argued that IBM violated the terms of its license by moving Project Monterey code to Linux.
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Xinuos made relevant arguments to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, but never managed Convince the judge that IBM and Red Hat are responsible. Initially, the claim was denied back in 2025 because Xiinos was still i can’t Prove that he has the right to be the plaintiff in this case.
On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the district court’s decision was irreversible. The court held that the documents submitted did not allow the issue to be reconsidered in the light of the original decision regarding the Monterey project – too late. Furthermore, the plaintiffs attempted to portray the case as a licensing dispute, when in fact it was about establishing title, and Sinos may not have had title at all.
Xinuos does not intend to give up – the company intends to ask the Court of Appeal to hear the case. This may never happen, as it is extremely rare, unless the court discovers a material error or important legal omission that would justify re-opening the case. The circuit’s chance of granting a retrial is 0.03%. In other words, the possibility of the zombie suit being resurrected is extremely low.
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