USL V. BSDi - University's Counterclaim

University's Counterclaim

The University also filed a separate lawsuit against USL for violation of USL's license to use the BSD code written at UC Berkeley. Unlike most licensees of the BSD code, USL's corporate predecessor AT&T had entered into an express written license with the University for the BSD software, requiring it to abide by terms similar to those required by the license statement present in each BSD source file. In particular, the license required AT&T to retain the University's copyright statements in the code and documentation of any redistribution of the BSD code.

As the University's complaint noted, AT&T's and USL's System V releases prior to the lawsuit (such as System V Release 4) did not include the required copyright notices and authorship acknowledgments and thus each copy shipped constituted a violation of the University's copyright and the license executed between the University and AT&T.

The University sought attorneys' fees in all the related actions, a declaration by the court that the University had the right to distribute 32V, a comprehensive advertising campaign by USL and AT&T to create industry awareness of the proportion of SVR4 code which had actually originated in the University's BSD software (by the University's own account, possibly more than had actually been written by AT&T itself), and an injunction preventing AT&T, USL, or their agents from making false claims about the provenance of the University's code. The University did not directly seek monetary damages for the distribution of its work in violation of its license nor did it ask, directly, for an order enjoining further distribution of USL's commercial products. However, the University asked the court to require that USL destroy all copies of the BSD software in its possession and cease using or distributing the University's code except in compliance with the copyright and acknowledgement requirements of the original license and the other terms of the relief requested from the Court.

If granted, this relief could have required USL to terminate many existing licenses and destroy a huge number of copies of the BSD code, potentially including copies used in its owner AT&T's own global telephone network, until such time as it was able to comply with the University's license requirements, rendering any victory in the original case Pyrrhic at best.