Lindows.com Sidesteps Linux Lawsuit Controversy

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May 29, 2003 (12:55 PM EDT)

Lindows.com Sidesteps Linux Lawsuit Controversy

Lindows.com Inc. said Thursday its consumer version of Linux is not affected by legal issues related to SCO Group Inc.'s intellectual property claims over the open-source operating system.

San Diego-based Lindows.com assured customers that it has a business agreement that protects them from any legal action from SCO.

"We're in a unique situation because of our pre-existing relationship with SCO, " Michael Robertson, chief executive of Lindows.com, said in a statement. "Recently, we have fielded some questions concerning LindowsOS and SCO's legal claims. We want to take this opportunity to emphasize there are no issues between SCO and Lindows.com."

Lindows.com, which sells a desktop version of Linux for consumers, has not taken a position as to the validity of SCO's claims, Robertson said.

SCO stunned the software industry in March when it sued IBM, claiming the high-tech giant misappropriated SCO's Unix software license by embedding the company's proprietary code into Linux. The company also claims its Unix code has been copied into the operating system developed by the open source community.

On Wednesday, Novell challenged SCO's ownership of the intellectual property of Unix. Novell said it owned the IP for Unix, and threatened to file a lawsuit of its own against SCO.