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Progress Report: 1993 Regents v. USL Complaint - Updated
Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 09:36 AM EST

Groklaw is busy working on updating and preserving our collection of documents and information, although the team is keeping the Timeline pages up-to-date, so you can still find all the latest court filings in the litigation we cover there. But it's appropriate from time to time to let you know how the work is going. You'll be happy to know that we're making progress completing our document collection. We'll have both the Comes v. Microsoft and the Gordon v. Microsoft exhibits ready by early next week, I think, if not before. You'll find links to the new collections on our permanent Microsoft Litigation page, once we're done.

And I've been busy going through all our materials, to make sure we haven't overlooked anything of interest. Here's the first find for you, the 1993 Regents of California complaint against USL, with attachments that you'll likely find interesting too. I have obtained it in paper format, and I've scanned it in page by page for you.

The complaint was chiefly regarding proper credit to the University, and as you will see, there's a tie-in to Santa Cruz Operation. The complaint alleged that perhaps as much as 50% of AT&T's System V Release 4 was actually comprised of the University's BSD code. While AT&T had licensed BSD 4.1 in 1983, by 1986 it desired to license 4.2 and 4.3. Exhibit A, the 1986 license agreement between the Regents of the University of California and AT&T, stated that BSD 4.2 and 4.3 included licensed 32V code. And on page 2, the agreement stated that AT&T acknowledged that 4.2 and 4.3 contained proprietary software belonging to the University and that it shall have "no right, title or interest in or to such proprietary software except as expressly set forth in this Agreement".

The Complaint, on page 3, tells us that AT&T wished to license BSD to use in its development of Unix System V, and that it thereby obtained the right to sublicense BSD, which it did to, among others, Santa Cruz Operation, who had failed, according to the Regents, to give the University proper credit. Another sublicensee was Intel, who, the complaint states, failed to give the University proper credit in its "IBCS2". Doesn't this help us to understand how, when SCO showed the code it claimed Linux was infringing at SCOforum 2003, some of it turned out to be BSD 4.3 code?

The Whereas clauses in the license agreement included the information that BSD 4.2 and 4.3 included material contributed by "persons other than agents, officers, and employees of the University" and the terms of which set forth the proper way to give the University and other authors of BSD proper credit.

The complaint states on page 10 that the University had ownership rights to all modifications it made to 32V:

30. UNIX 32V was released by AT&T on or about 1978. AT&T granted the University the right to enhance, modify, and improve 32V and granted the University all ownership rights to such enhancements, modifications, and improvements. The University had the option to release to the public those enhancements, modifications, and improvements to UNIX 32V that did not contain AT&T code or disclose AT&T's trade secrets to non-AT&T licensees.
Interesting, no? Remember in SCO v. IBM SCO's long song and dance about contractual rights to require licensees to keep all modifications secret and treat them exactly like UNIX code? While the USL-Regents litigation was over 32V, the terms regarding modifications matches what IBM claimed, not what SCO alleged, that it always had such a requirement. It also speaks to SCO's failed methods and concepts claims, I'd think.

Here is the Complaint [note update below for PDFs]:

And here are the exhibits:

[Update: Thanks to Nykolai Bilaniuk, we have the above as PDFs:

He tells me he "took the JPEG originals, cleaned them up a bit in Photoshop (e.g. rotations), then cropped them, enhanced contrast and converted to 1-bit per pixel TIFFs. Those [he] PDFed, giving a very compact and easily printable file. The 1-bit TIFFs are also the inputs to the OCR process." End update.]

The 1986 agreement, Exhibit A, on page 3, states this:

8. Proper Credit and Recognition. In the use of any part of 4.2 BSD and 4.3 BSD, AT&T will give appropriate credit to the University and the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department at the Berkeley Campus of the University of California and to the Other Contributors for their roles in its development and will require sublicensees to give such credit. If AT&T is providing documentation similar to that which is provided with 4.2 BSD and 4.3 BSD, notices similar to those included in that documentation suffice to satisfy this requirement. If AT&T is providing new documentation, this requirement will be satisfied if each document includes the following statement: "This software and documentation is based in part on the Fourth Berkeley Software Distribution under license from The Regents of the University of California. We acknowledge the following individuals and institutions for their role in its development: [insert names of individuals and institutions which appear in the documentation provided to AT&T as part of 4.2 BSD and 4.3 BSD for those portions of said Distribution used by AT&T.]"
This wording, which the complaint alleged was not used by AT&T, was simplified in the eventual settlement.

The complaint points out that under the Tahoe addendum, Exhibit B, AT&T had the right to redistribute and use BSD provided that all copyright notices, as per the agreement, followed the wording outlined, "Copyright (c) 1982, 1986 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved." However, the complaint alleged, "USL failed to include the University's copyright notice in its Unix System V, Release 4."

And here, for completeness' sake is the Order to Show Cause filed in Superior Court of California, County of Alameda, on January of 1994 and the eventual Request for Dismissal form, dated February 15, 1994 and filed by the plaintiff, the Regents of the University of California, and subsequently signed and filed by the court on February 9, 1994, the dismissal with prejudice ending that breach of contract litigation.


  


Progress Report: 1993 Regents v. USL Complaint - Updated | 156 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections
Authored by: alisonken1 on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 09:51 AM EST

And a short note in the subject line would help

Kerrections -> Corrections

---
- Ken -
import std_disclaimer.py
Registered Linux user^W^WJohn Doe #296561
Slackin' since 1993
http://www.slackware.com

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic here
Authored by: alisonken1 on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 09:53 AM EST
Something not related to the story should be posted here. follow the notes about making clickies and don't forget to change the post mode to "HTML Formatted"

---
- Ken -
import std_disclaimer.py
Registered Linux user^W^WJohn Doe #296561
Slackin' since 1993
http://www.slackware.com

[ Reply to This | # ]

Newspick Note Here
Authored by: alisonken1 on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 09:55 AM EST

Quesions, Comments, Thoughts on Newspick items should go here.

---
- Ken -
import std_disclaimer.py
Registered Linux user^W^WJohn Doe #296561
Slackin' since 1993
http://www.slackware.com

[ Reply to This | # ]

I can attest to that...
Authored by: Marc Mengel on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 12:18 PM EST
...the complaint alleged, "USL failed to include the University's copyright notice in its Unix System V, Release 4."
Specifically, I did maintenance work on "vi" both at the Purdue University Computing Center on 4.3 BSD, and later at AT&T on SysVR3 and SysVR4, and all of the Berkeley copyrights (and many of the other comments) in the vi code had been stripped, and replaced with AT&T Copyrights.

[ Reply to This | # ]

2008 10K posted
Authored by: TomWiles on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 12:22 PM EST
A couple of interesting items here.

At the end of September (their fiscal year) total assets was about eight million
dollars.

Current liabilities was about five million dollars, and billed legal expenses
(but not yet approved by the court and paid) was about seven million dollars.


They have to be very close to the point where they can no longer write a check
for current operations! One has to wonder how much longer they can exist in CH
11, and when the court will understand that the court has a duty to deal with
this.

Tom

[ Reply to This | # ]

Goes nicely with the 2004 article about the 1994 settlement
Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 01:34 PM EST
Very interesting article, thanks.

Also for completeness sake it seems this article should link back to the USL v UC settlement article. Here's the link (which I keep a link to on my personal website permanently):

The 1994 USL-Regents of UCal Settlement Agreement - PDF and text
Groklaw
Sunday, November 28 2004 @ 02:41 PM EST
And so the bullying by secrecy is over.

It's a peace treaty between the parties, neither of whom actually agrees that the other's claims are necessarily true, but they agree as to what each will do going forward to lay down their arms.
I hope I'm not confused that these are in fact intimately related settlements, am I?

---
"Then you admit confirming not denying you ever said that?"
"NO! ... I mean Yes! WHAT?"
"I'll put `maybe.'"
--Bloom County

[ Reply to This | # ]

50%? Ridiculous.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 04:49 PM EST
The bulk of the new development in SVR4 was AT&T and SUN joint work. The
BSD code included in SVR4 was almost all user-level code (primarily libraries
and commands for application compatibility with precompiled BSD-based apps).

[ Reply to This | # ]

Progress Report: 1993 Regents v. USL Complaint
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 05:44 PM EST
>>> The complaint states on page 10 that the University had ownership
rights to all modifications it made to 32V:

30. UNIX 32V was released by AT&T on or about 1978. AT&T granted the
University the right to enhance, modify, and improve 32V and granted the
University all ownership rights to such enhancements, modifications, and
improvements. <<<

This is certainly NOT true. The Copyright Act of 1976 automatically granted
"all ownership rights to such enhancements, modifications, and
improvements" to the University:

ยง 103. Subject matter of copyright: Compilations and derivative works

(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the
material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the
preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive
right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of,
and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence
of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Scanning as jpegs?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 13 2009 @ 05:03 PM EST
The scanning of these documents is weird:

-- They're scanned one page at a time, instead of as a whole document, making
it really hard to read through a full document.

-- They're scanned as jpegs, which for some reason these particular jpegs won't
even open on my computer at work, all I get is a blank screen. (They do open at
home on my Linux box). So what kind of weird jpegs are these? I don't usually
have problems at work opening mere image files.

-- They're scanned as images, which usually take up more file size than text
scans.

-- And because they are images, their internal content is not searchable.

I'm glad Groklaw is concentrating on archiving documents, but I'm not sure this
type of scanning is the right way to do it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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