Re: Unix copyrights ...
... got off to a strange start because to begin with Unix was distributed as source code with no copyright notice. People fixed and improved it and some of those changes got back into what AT&T distributed. If there ever was such a thing as Unix copyrights, when AT&T was split up for abuse of monopoly the copyrights went to one of the fragments: Unix Systems Laboratories. USL promptly sued the Regents of the University of California because Berkeley Software Distribution distributed their own implementation of the Unix APIs. (USL wanted to abuse a monopoly in operating systems and lacked the brains to sue the correct organisation.)
USL proposed a settlement that had USL paying court costs, legal fees for both sides, giving up and going home with only a non-disclosure agreement to cover their embarrassment. They sold the Unix copyrights to Novell (who did not transfer them to SCO) and AFAIK the copyrights now belong to Attachmate. That did not stop the court appointed trustee for the bankrupt shell of SCO selling the Unix copyrights to some twit who probably believes he owns the Golden Gate bridge too. The intermediate court rulings from USL vs RotUC were later released as part of another case. The judge had ruled that header files were not copyrightable because they embody the API, not the implementation.
Oracle had the foresight to include some patents in their original complaint which gave the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit jurisdiction - even though all the patents were thrown out of the case early on for being irrelevant, invalid or both. Although copyright law is not really their thing, the USCAFC are good at ramming patent law down the throats of anyone doing anything innovative and as we have just seen, did not let established copyright law or findings of fact from two jury verdicts stand in the way.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
