Tag: ibm

October 30, 2017 Contracts, Unfair Competition

Court reinstates SCO’s misappropriation claim against IBM in long-running lawsuit

For almost a decade and a half, SCO and IBM have been fighting over their collaboration gone wrong concerning the development of a new version of UNIX for Intel processors. The case has garnered much attention, including from the open source community. You can read the backstory here on the Wikipedia page for the dispute. The case has been on appeal to the Tenth Circuit, which released its opinion on October 30. The decision was a mixed ruling – the court affirmed summary judgment in favor of IBM on most of the issues, but ruled in favor of SCO on one important claim – misappropriation.

SCO sued IBM for the tort of misappropriation (a form of unfair competition) arising from IBM’s alleged use in its own product of source code that SCO had contributed to the joint efforts to develop the new UNIX version. The district court granted IBM’s motion for summary judgment on the misappropriation claim, holding that such a claim was barred under New York law’s “independent tort doctrine”. SCO sought review with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court reversed and remanded the case on the misappropriation claim.

This doctrine provides that a simple breach of contract is not to be considered a tort unless a legal duty independent of the contract itself has been violated. This separate duty must spring from circumstances extraneous to, and not constituting elements of, the contract, although it may be connected with and dependent upon the contract.

In this case, the court held that while IBM and SCO may not have had a formal partnership or joint venture as a matter of law, they surely enjoyed a business relationship in which each reposed a degree of trust and confidence in the other. In such a situation, there exists a duty not to take a business collaborator’s property in bad faith and without its consent in order to compete against that owner’s use of the same property.

SCO v. IBM, — F.3d —, 2017 WL 4872572 (10th Cir., October 30, 2017)

Evan_BrownAbout the Author: Evan Brown is a Chicago technology and intellectual property attorney. Call Evan at (630) 362-7237, send email to ebrown [at] internetcases.com, or follow him on Twitter @internetcases. Read Evan’s other blog, UDRP Tracker, for information about domain name disputes.

May 23, 2012 Trade Secrets

IBM’s Siri ban underscores important business concern over trade secrets

IBM doesn’t let its employees use Siri, out of concern Apple may store and use sensitive IBM data. This decision on IBM’s part underscores an important business concern that companies of all sizes — not just behemoths like IBM — either have or should have.

internet anonymity

Apple’s data usage policy that governs how it treats Siri inquiries says that Apple can use the information it collects to, among other things, improve the service. That’s a pretty broad grant of authority. Because the system that makes Siri available is so complex and multifaceted, Apple could reasonably justify extracting and using the information contained in just about any question people ask Siri. When that information comes from another major player in the competitive space, the implications of the appropriation of proprietary information become obvious.

IBM’s big concern is likely focused squarely on the protection of its trade secrets. State law provides the contours of trade secrets law, so the elements vary from state to state. But in general, a company can enforce its exclusive rights to possess and use information that (1) gives that company a competitive advantage, and (2) which is subject to efforts to keep secret. That latter part — keeping the information secret — is a big reason for nondisclosure agreements, password protected servers, and sensible restrictions on employee use of third party technologies (like social media and search tools like Siri).

Evan Brown is a Chicago technology and intellectual property attorney, representing businesses and individuals in a variety of situations, including matters dealing with the identification and protection of confidential business information.

Photo credit: Spec-ta-cles under this license.

Scroll to top