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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- IBM Corp. asked a federal judge to throw out The SCO Group Inc.'s $5 billion lawsuit, arguing the Utah company failed to show its intellectual property was misappropriated when Big Blue donated software code to the freely distributed Linux operating system. SCO shares tumbled just short of a 52-week low.
IBM filed six motions asking U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball and Magistrate Brooke Wells to toss out the claims remaining after Wells struck down most of SCO's case months ago.
"For years, SCO purported to have evidence that IBM took confidential source code ... from UNIX System V and 'dumped' it into Linux. However, SCO does not have any such evidence," IBM lawyers said in court papers filed Tuesday.
The lawyers said any code IBM contributed was "homegrown IBM" work or from sources other than SCO.
SCO filed motions of its own Tuesday seeking to uphold claims of contract and copyright infringement.
Kimball's office said Wednesday that no hearing had been schedule yet on the motions.
"Both sides have filed several motions for summary judgment which will be fully briefed and argued over the next couple of months," SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said.
Wells ruled in June that SCO had "willfully failed to comply" with court orders to show IBM which of millions of lines of computer code in Linux were supposedly misappropriated.
SCO argued that was IBM's job, a stance Wells likened to a security guard who accuses a shopper of stealing merchandise and demanding the shopper show proof of the theft.
The case remains scheduled for a February 2007 trial, but the ruling by Wells gutted SCO's case.
SCO is appealing that ruling to Kimball.
SCO shares closed down 8.43 percent at $1.80 Wednesday, before plummeting to $1.58, just above the 52-week low of $1.52 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
