Novell offers legal help to Linux customers
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SuSE Linux distributor Novell has become the latest supplier to pledge legal help to customers should they be sued by SCO Group.
13 January 2004 SuSE Linux distributor Novell has become the latest supplier to pledge legal help to customers should they be sued by SCO Group, the Unix operating system vendor that claims that Linux contains intellectual property copied from its own technology.
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SCO has warned that it will begin a test case against a high-profile Linux user before the end of February this year. In an effort to reassure customers, a succession of suppliers have promised some legal protection.
Hewlett-Packard and the open source software distributor Red Hat have both promised to help defend any customer threatened with legal action from SCO.
This week, Intel and IBM announced they are backing a legal 'fighting fund' to fight SCO's attempts to extract license fees from Linux users. The fund, established by the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), has a projected target of $10 million. $3 million has already been raised.
Novell has said it will provide protection of $1.5 million, or a factor of 1.25 of their software purchase price. It will only indemnify users who have signed support agreements with Novell, said CEO Jess Messman.
Intellectual property lawyer Mark Radcliffe, of US firm Gray Cary, believes Novell's move will make it more difficult for SCO to put pressure on licensees. "I assume that now Novell have done it, other people are going to have to do it, whether they like it or not," Radcliffe.
Novell recently completed the acquisition of SuSE, the largest European distributor of Linux and second-largest distributor worldwide after Red Hat, for $210 million in cash.
