Xinuos Sues IBM and Red Hat for Antitrust Violations and Copyright Infringement, Alleges IBM Has Been Misleading its Investors Since 2008

Xinuos, Inc., a software company headquartered in the U.S. Virgin Islands that provides commercial customers with server operating systems, today filed a copyright infringement and antitrust lawsuit against International Business Machines Corp. ("IBM") and Red Hat, Inc. ("Red Hat") in the United States District Court of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas and St. John Division. Xinuos alleges that IBM and Red Hat, using wrongfully copied software code, have engaged in additional, illegal anti-competitive misconduct to corner the billion-dollar market for Unix and Linux server operating systems.

Xinuos sues IBM

A company called Xinuos has announced a lawsuit against IBM and Red Hat that has a familiar echo to it. "Xinuos alleges that the IBM and Red Hat conspiracy has harmed the open-source community and specifically Xinuos’ OpenServer 10 product, which is based on FreeBSD, an open-source UNIX-based operating system and alternative to Red Hat’s Linux-based open-source operating system, RHEL. 'By dominating the Unix/Linux server operating system market, competing open-source operating systems, like our FreeBSD-based OpenServer 10, have been pushed out of the market.'" The full text of the suit [PDF] is available for those wanting the details.

SCO Linux FUD returns from the dead

Believe it or not, SCO's ancient and long disproved copyright claims that Linux was copied from Unix are returning in a new lawsuit by Xinuos vs IBM and Red Hat.

Xinuos Sues IBM & Red Hat for Allegedly Copying Software Code

Xinuos is known for their open-source operating systems (OpenServer) tailored for enterprises.

Out of the blue, it looks like they filed a copyright infringement and antitrust lawsuit against IBM and Red Hat in the United States District Court of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas and St. John Division.

Xinuos alleges that IBM illegally copied its server operating system’s source code and engaged with Red Hat to proceed with anti-competitive behavior in the industry.

Project Monterey returns to haunt IBM and Red Hat

A longstanding dispute over Unix copyright infringement has come back to haunt IBM and Red Hat.

Xinuos, the current owner of UnixWare and OpenServer, has filed a lawsuit claiming that IBM and Red Hat, using wrongfully copied software code, have engaged in additional, illegal anti-competitive misconduct to corner the billion-dollar market for Unix and Linux server operating systems.

Sean Snyder, president and CEO of Xinuos, described the copyright infringement as having a wider remit than intellectual property theft. “It’s also about market manipulation that has harmed consumers, competitors, the open-source community and innovation itself,” he said.

[...]

The plan was to work with IBM to develop an operating system for modern 64-bit hardware architectures that would allow applications originally created for 32-bit architectures to continue to function, and to include modern features for complex enterprise applications. According to the court papers, Project Monterey gave IBM confidential access to the operating system code owned by Xinuos.

Xinuos sues IBM for patent infringement | IT PRO

Lawsuit revisits ancient legal war over Unix code

Xinuos—owners of what used to be SCO—file suit against Red Hat and IBM

Yesterday, UnixWare/OpenServer vendor Xinuos filed a lawsuit in the US Virgin Islands, alleging theft of intellectual property and monopolistic market collusion against joint defendants IBM and Red Hat.

If this sounds like a familiar, well-worn tale, it should. Xinuos is the company that purchased the remnants of the SCO Group in 2011. The SCO Group, in turn, is a company most famous not for its actual products but for its litigation against IBM and Linux. That litigation began in 2003—partially funded by a very different Microsoft, only five years after the leak of the Halloween documents in which Microsoft acknowledged the "long-term viability" of open source software and discussed strategies to choke it out of the market.

The substance of the original lawsuit is SCO's claim that IBM pulled proprietary code out of SCO Unix and inserted it into the Linux kernel. The subsequent 18 years have not been kind to SCO, which first filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and then eventually sold off its intellectual property (but not its litigation rights) to Xinuos, then named UnXis, in 2011.

Software company sues IBM and Red Hat, claiming they 'conspired' to 'crush' competitors - Charlotte Business Journal

SCO Successor Files Lawsuit Against IBM | IT Pro

The suit alleges that IBM stole proprietary code, then colluded with Red Hat to lock Xinuos out of the Linux market.

IBM – Xinuos—owners of what used to be SCO—file suit against Red Hat and IBM

If this sounds like a familiar, well-worn tale, it should. Xinuos is the company that purchased the remnants of the SCO Group in 2011. The SCO Group, in turn, is a company most famous not for its actual products but for its litigation against IBM and Linux. That litigation began in 2003—partially funded by a very different Microsoft, only five years after the leak of the Halloween documents in which Microsoft acknowledged the “long-term viability” of open source software and discussed strategies to choke it out of the market.

IBM, Red Hat face copyright infringement, antitrust lawsuit in alleged ‘conspiracy’

IBM and Red Hat are alleged to using wrongfully copied software code in a copyright infringement and antitrust lawsuit filed today by Xinuos, a software company headquartered in the U.S. Virgin Islands that a decade ago acquired a company that had unsuccessfully fought IBM in court.

Alleges that IBM and Red Hat “engaged in additional, illegal anti-competitive misconduct to corner the billion-dollar market for Unix and Linux server operating systems.”

[...]

Interestingly, in 2011, Xinuos acquired another Unix firm, SCO, which sued IBM years ago and ultimately failed in its legal battle.

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Plus our reaction to SCO reigniting their decades-long fight with IBM and Red Hat, and the big news in GTK-land you might have missed.

SCO vs IBM Zombie Lawsuit Back from the Dead

Software Co. Challenges IBM's $34B Red Hat Buy, Code 'Theft'

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

It seemed like a classic April The First spoof. Indeed, some tech titles had it on their lists of best pranks of the day. But it's true: the software zombie court case to end all zombie software court cases has woken from its slumber. Nearly 29 years after it first lurched from the crypt, SCO v The World Of Linux is back, and it smells just as bad as ever.

The details need not worry us: they were bad enough at the time. Have a look at this timeline if you want to follow the trail of dead.

At its most basic, the whole saga started with the reanimated Unix dev corpse SCO Group claiming it owned the rights to core technology in Unix and Linux, and that everyone else was using them illegally. An opening court case against IBM was followed by a salvo of letters demanding money from 1,500 companies, then the pre-IBM Red Hat countersued to stop the nonsense.

Echoes of SCO case: Xinuos sues IBM, Red Hat in Virgin Islands

The American software company Xinuos, created in 2011, has sued IBM and Red Hat over alleged anti-trust violations and copyright infringement, and claims that Big Blue has been misleading its investors since 2008.

According to Wikipedia, "Xinuos develops and markets the Unix-based OpenServer 6, OpenServer 5, and UnixWare 7 operating systems, which have a long history in the marketplace, with prior owners being the Santa Cruz Operation and The SCO Group, as well as the newer OpenServer 10 operating system, which it developed upon a base of FreeBSD".

This case is reminiscent of the one that SCO filed against IBM in 2003. In 2015, after lying dormant for nearly five years, that case reappeared on the docket of the US federal court in Utah.

IBM, Red Hat Sued by Xinuos for Allegedly Stealing Code, Using it to “Crush Competition”

On Wednesday, computer software company Xinuos Inc. filed a complaint in the District of the Virgin Islands against International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Red Hat Inc. for purportedly stealing its copyrighted code and using it for anticompetitive conduct in the Unix/Linux paid server operating system market.

According to the complaint, “IBM and Red Hat conspired to illegally corner a market and crush competition.” Specifically, Xinuos claimed that “IBM stole Xinuos’ intellectual property and used that stolen property to build and sell a product to compete with Xinuous itself” by incorporating core elements of the stolen code into its own code. The plaintiff averred that “ IBM and Red Hat illegally agreed to divide the relevant market and use their growing market powers to victimize consumers, innovative competitors, and innovation itself.” Xinuos proffered that “after IBM and Red Hat launched their conspiracy, IBM then acquired Red Hat to solidify and make their scheme.” Lastly, the plaintiff argued that “IBM has been misleading its investors by falsely claiming all infringement claims against IBM regarding the copied code have been waived.”