[1][2] Pursuant to the court order reopening the case, an IBM Motion for Summary Judgment was filed based upon the results of the Novell decision.

On March 1, 2016, following a ruling against the last remaining claims, the judge dismissed SCO's suit against IBM with prejudice.

[5] In February 2018, as a result of the appeal and the case being partially remanded to the circuit court, the parties restated their remaining claims and provided a plan to move toward final judgement.

In May 2003, SCO Group sent letters to members of the Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies warning them of the possibility of liability if they use Linux.

"Certainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus, they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole.

[21]SCO refuses to allow access to the samples of code containing the alleged copyright violations except under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

However, at SCO's annual reseller's convention in August 2003, they revealed two short sections of code they alleged were copyright violations, and images of Darl McBride's presentation of this code were soon after published on German computer magazine publisher Heinz Heise's website.

The lawsuit caused moral indignation and outrage in the free software and open source communities, who consider SCO's claims to be without merit and even cynically dishonest.

[36] On May 30, 2003, Linus Torvalds, developer of the Linux kernel, was quoted as saying, regarding the case: Quite frankly, I found it mostly interesting in a Jerry Springer kind of way.

Let's face it, nobody else even comes close to being as good at showing the evolution and source of every single line of code out there.On June 27, 2003, Eben Moglen, the counsel for the Free Software Foundation, released a more complete statement regarding the SCO lawsuit.

In this statement, he reiterates many of the points made above, and states that:[31] As to its trade secret claims, which are the only claims actually made in the lawsuit against IBM, there remains the simple fact that SCO has for years distributed copies of the kernel, Linux, as part of GNU/Linux free software systems.

[...] There is simply no legal basis on which SCO can claim trade secret liability in others for material it widely and commercially published itself under a license that specifically permitted unrestricted copying and distribution.On July 31, 2003, the Open Source Development Labs released a position paper on the ongoing conflict,[40][41] written by the FSF's Eben Moglen.

[43] Univention GmbH, a Linux integrator, reported[44][45] on May 30, 2003, it was granted an injunction by a Bremen court under German competition law that prohibits the SCO Group's German division from claiming that Linux contains illegally obtained SCO intellectual property.

[46] On July 23, 2003, Open Source Victoria announced that it had filed a complaint with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, "asking the ACCC to investigate the SCO Group's activities in light of their unsubstantiated claims and their extortive legal threats for money against possibly hundreds of thousands of Australians".

[48] Within a few months of the filing of the lawsuit, Eben Moglen, the Free Software Foundation's legal counsel at the time, stated that SCO's suit should not concern Linux users other than IBM.

In an interview with internetnews.com, he was reported as saying:[30] There is absolute difficulty with this line of argument which ought to make everybody in the world aware that the letters that SCO has put out can be safely put in the wastebasket... From the moment that SCO distributed that code under the GNU General Public License, they would have given everybody in the world the right to copy, modify and distribute that code freely...

[52] SCO originally based its views on the following considerations:[citation needed] Section 8 of Article One of the United States Constitution states that [Congress shall have power] to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.Since the GNU General Public License for the most part disclaims exclusive rights, SCO claimed that its use violates this clause.

One such commentator, Tom Carey, partner and chairman of a Boston intellectual property law firm, even went so far as to say "Attacks on the GPL are far-fetched and a little bit desperate".

[53] Professor Eben Moglen, on leave from the Columbia University law faculty for the year 2006–2007, speaking as counsel to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) who is responsible for drafting the GPL, also takes this view.

In a talk at Harvard in February, he addressed the issue of constitutionality by referring to Congress' recent extension of copyright term limits.

"It turns out that there's no such thing as an unconstitutional copyright rule," he said, "if Congress passes it, and if it observes the distinction between expression and idea.

"[54] Novell entered the controversy by publishing on May 28, 2003, a press release concerning the SCO Group's ownership of UNIX.

On August 10, 2007, Judge Kimball issued a ruling which says in part "the court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights."

[12][55] Reuters reported that the SCO Group intended to revoke IBM's license to use UNIX code in their AIX operating system on June 13, 2003, if no resolution is reached before then.

[56] On August 10, 2007, Judge Kimball ruled that Novell was the owner of UNIX and thus could waive SCO's termination of IBM's license.

This gave SCO a 30-day deadline to provide "with specificity" which lines of code in Linux they claim form the basis of their case.

[65] The code (atealloc) had been in the IA-64 version of Linux for a short period of time, but had already been removed on July 4, 2003, for technical reasons and because "it's ugly as hell.

"[66][67] UNIX creator Dennis Ritchie confirmed that either he or Ken Thompson wrote the atealloc code, which is released under the BSD license.

[71][72] SCO Group claimed in a press release to have sent DMCA notification letters alleging copyright infringement.

[75][76] The letters give the names of 65 files in the Linux source code tree which supposedly incorporate "copyrighted binary interfaces".