A SCO intellectual property license “permits the use of SCO’s intellectual property, in binary form only, as contained in Linux distributions,” the company said in a release. SCO said users who purchase the licenses are properly compensating the company for use of its licensed UNIX code that is found in Linux.
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The SCO IP License is $699 US per server processor and $199 US per desktop processor.
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The SCO Group claims that several enterprise versions of the Linux operating system violate its intellectual property rights for UNIX technology.
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That claim is currently being debated as part of SCO’s lawsuit against IBM, which SCO has accused of violating its intellectual property rights by contributing pieces of UNIX code, licensed for use in IBM’s AIX system, to the Linux community.
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Last week, SCO sent a letter to its 6,000 UNIX licensees, asking them to certify that they are in compliance with all UNIX source code agreements and are not using any of SCO’s UNIX code in Linux.
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The SCO Group has also issued a letter to Fortune 1000 companies outlining SCO’s copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
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The company said it plans to roll out licenses to other countries in Europe and around the world by February.
