[snooker]

Sun owns rights to the code and APIs that are under dispute. Sun bought licenses in the 90s that were good forever. They also got the right to use the UNIX trademark. So how does this work again?

[snooker]

Sun Solaris not Affected by IBM-SCO UNIX Licensing Dispute
3/10/2003 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. confirmed with its customers and partners that it has licensing rights to UNIX code, on which the Solaris[tm] Operating System is based for both SPARC and recently available x86 systems. In light of SCO's legal dispute with IBM over UNIX licensing rights, Sun announced it has absolutely no licensing issues with SCO today. Sun's previous licensing agreements give Sun complete UNIX IP rights in relation to Sun's operating systems. This makes the Solaris Operating System a safe choice for customers moving forward. With the Solaris multiplatform product line, customers can have a consistent Solaris environment from low-end x86 servers, up to hundreds of processors, in a SPARC mainframe-class system.

Sun confirms that:

* As part of a series of licensing agreements, Sun acquired rights to make and ship derivative products based on the intellectual property in UNIX. This forms the foundation for the Solaris OS that ships today.
* Sun's complete line of Solaris and Linux products -- including Solaris for the SPARC and x86 platforms, Trusted Solaris[tm], the industry's premier highly secure operating system, and Sun Linux -- are covered by Sun's portfolio of UNIX licensing agreements.
* Solaris and Sun Linux represent safe choices for those companies that develop and deploy services based on UNIX systems.