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From: dricejb@drilex.dri.mgh.com (Craig Jackson drilex1)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: AT&T or USL, and extrapolation
Message-ID: <51670@drilex.dri.mgh.com>
Date: 27 Jul 92 14:47:35 GMT
References: <1992Jul23.064028@eklektix.com> <1830@adagio.UUCP> <1992Jul25.164257.5424@nebulus.ca>
Organization: DRI/McGraw-Hill, Lexington, MA
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NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
Thank you for posting the entire complaint. Upon reading, several things
struck me:
1. I saw no mention of "trade secret" or similar words. USL/AT&T simply
alleges that the NET2 code is derived from USL/AT&T code.
2. USL/AT&T seems to make a distinction that BSDI is marketing an operating
system based on the NET2 code, rather than a fragment of one. This may
be related to the fact that "Unix" is a trademark of a particular brand
of operating system. (I heard a rule years ago: "Trademarks are adjectives,
not nouns.")
This might be an attempt to draw a distinction between the effort of
BSDI and the NET2 distribution sitting on UUNET, which is not a complete
operating system. However, this doesn't make sense. Either there is
a license violation, or there isn't, it would seem to me. Revealing a
portion of a trade secret is just as bad as revealing the whole secret.
3. An interesting point is that AT&T/USL seems to allege that the term "BSD"
has become linked with the AT&T/USL trademark "Unix", since all past
BSD releases required an AT&T license. This would seem to lay groundwork
for a trademark-confusion suit based solely on the use of the term "BSD".
Obviously, the crux of this suit is whether the NET2 distribution requires
an USL/AT&T license. All of the other stuff about 800-ITS-UNIX, etc. are
simply sloppy business practices on the part of BSDI. I think that the
origins of this suit go back several years to when AT&T shut down the
office they once had which would examine a piece of code to see if it contained
AT&T proprietary code. At that time, they decided to not give away their
rights to anything, but rather to let the courts decide.
I still don't understand exactly why the Regents of the University of
California were not a party to the suit. It would seem that one option
BSDI would have, should it lose, would be to sue the Regents for false
statements about the origin of the code.
--
Craig Jackson
dricejb@drilex.dri.mgh.com
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