Still, suppose there is infringing code in Linux. Can SCO claim damages?
For trade secrets, no one is liable for damages except the people who improperly disclosed them. If you didn’t promise to keep a secret, you aren’t obliged to keep it. To pursue a claim of copyright infringment, SCO would have to establish a valid copyright claim — not a simple task for the AT&T code, due to the 1993 ruling, and due to Novell’s competing claim for the same copyrights. Furthermore, the plaintiff in a copyright infringement case must make a good faith effort to mitigate the damages, where possible, by letting the defendant remove the infringing material. SCO has steadfastly refused to do so. It refuses to identify the allegedly infringing code, or even to provide any evidence of infringement, other than the two examples discussed earlier — both of which were immediately shown to be spurious. But if SCO identified the infringing code, the Linux people would just replace it.
Related Questions
- Why doesnt SCO just simply publish this code so that it can be taken out of Linux if it is indeed infringing? And why do you require a non-disclosure agreement to view some of this infringing code?
- Isn it possible that someone slipped some SCO code into Linux, and the rest of the Linux team didn realize it?
- Still, suppose there is infringing code in Linux. Can SCO claim damages?
