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From: guyd@austin.ibm.com (Guy Dawson)
Subject: USL vs BSDI : Judge Debevoise continues to earn his pay :-)
Originator: guyd@pal500.austin.ibm.com
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Message-ID: <C58KzH.LpE@austin.ibm.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1993 21:57:16 GMT
Organization: IBM Austin
Lines: 73
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 8, 1993
Press Contact:
Donnalyn Frey
(703) 764-9342
USL Again Fails to Halt BSDI Shipments
On March 30, 1993, Judge Dickinson Debevoise of the United States
District Court of New Jersey reaffirmed his denial of Unix System
Laboratories' ("USL") motion for a preliminary injunction against
Berkeley Software Design, Inc. ("BSDI").
USL had sought to prevent BSDI from shipping its product, BSD/386,
pending trial, arguing that BSD/386 infringed USL's copyright in its 32V
software and misappropriated USL trade secrets. The Court denied USL's
request for a preliminary injunction on March 3, 1993, ruling that USL had
failed to show a likelihood of success on either its copyright claim or
its trade secret claim.
In rejecting USL's argument that it was entitled to an injunction
based on copyright infringement, the Court found that the 32V source code
had been distributed without a copyright notice. The Court rejected USL's
argument that the publication of 32V was sufficiently limited to avoid a
forfeiture, and thus found that USL had not demonstrated a likelihood that
it could defend its copyright. The Court further ruled that USL had
failed to establish that BSD/386 contained any USL trade secrets.
On March 15, 1993, USL filed a motion for reconsideration, asking
the District Court to hold a new hearing on the issue of whether USL had
published 32V without a copyright notice. USL argued that the Court's
prior ruling was based on an incorrect finding as to the number of copies
of 32V distributed. (USL's motion for reconsideration did not challenge
the Court's ruling that USL had failed to establish trade secret
misappropriation.)
On March 30, 1993, the Court denied USL's motion for
reconsideration. Although the Court amended its prior factual finding as
to the number of copies distributed, the Court found the number was not
critical to its ruling on the issue of publication without notice. The
Court thus declined to change its determination that USL had not shown a
likelihood of success on the merits of its copyright claim and found that
a new hearing on USL's motion for preliminary injunction would be futile.
The text of the judge's most recent opinion is currently sealed,
but will automatically become public record on April 14, 1993 unless USL
formally objects to its publication.
BSDI remains free to continue shipping the production release of
its BSD/386 Unix-compatible operating system for the 386/486 PC
architecture. BSDI believes that Judge Debevoise's repeated findings that
USL has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its central
claims bolsters BSDI's long held position that USL's suit is completely
without merit.
--- End of forwarded message from kolstad@BSDI.COM (Rob Kolstad)
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-- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guy Dawson - Hoskyns Group Plc.
guyd@hoskyns.co.uk Tel Hoskyns UK - 71 251 2128
guyd@austin.ibm.com Tel IBM Austin USA - 512 838 3377