"A misappropriation case is not particularly expensive," Ferrell said. "To the extent that they begin to raise copyright infringement issues and patents are ultimately brought in -- which they could well be -- this could be an incredibly difficult litigation for SCO."-- John Ferrell, 2003-05-16

"It's an axiom of law in business that it's not a great idea to sue your customers or your potential customers," Ferrell told internetnews.com. "In the event that they intend to sue customers, they may drive away potential customers of both their Linux business as well as their Unix business. I think they're going to be very careful before they sue customers. It's also easier to sue a few distributors or publishers or developers."-- John Ferrell, 2003-05-16

"They filed for misappropriation of trade secrets to get them in Utah state court rather than federal court," John Ferrell, founding partner and chairman of the intellectual property practice at Palo Alto-based law firm Carr & Ferrell LLP, told internetnews.com. "SCO being in Utah would have had hometown advantage over a large IT corporation."

He added, "so far, everything that has been filed has been state court claims relating to the misappropriation of Unix software secrets by IBM. The misappropriation comes down to the allegation that IBM, having rightful possession of Unix secrets, breached its duty of secrecy with SCO by conveying and transmitting those secrets to third parties. Those third parties were the members of the Linux community that were working on drivers and various other enhancements to the Linux operating system."-- John Ferrell, 2003-05-16

"They've [Rambus] announced that their litigation fees were in the order of about $2 million per month for intellectual property litigation," he said. "This is a big undertaking."-- John Ferrell, 2003-05-16

"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," Moglen told internetnews.com, noting that SCO distributed its own version of Linux with a kernel that allegedly contains Unix-derived code.

"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," he said. "From the moment SCO distributed the Linux kernel under GPL, they licensed the use. Always. That's what our license says."-- Eben Moglen, 2003-05-16

"That's akin to saying, "Show me the fingerprints so I can clean them off." The Linux community would love for us to point out the lines of code. We're willing to show that under non-disclosure to select individuals, but the first time we show that publicly will not be in the open," SCO spokesman Blake Stowell told internetnews.com.-- Blake Stowell, 2003-05-16

"SCO's lawsuit can be construed as an attempt to raise shareholder value through claims of intellectual-property infringement or to pressure IBM into an acquisition," Weiss said in an April research note.

He added, "If IBM is found to be in violation according to the complaint, its options will be to settle on a compromise in damages or to buy out SCO. It is unlikely IBM will acquire SCO and add to an already complex portfolio with SCO's aging OSs, especially with Linux as IBM's mainstream direction. However, IBM is committed to protect its users and maintain Unix license rights."-- George Weiss, 2003-05-16