Then, for unexplained reasons, IBM dropped one of its four infringements claims against SCO and wants SCO's copyright claims dropped from the case "after agreeing." SCO says, "to let [it] put them in with its second amended filing."

That was the filing in which SCO dropped its initial misappropriation of trade secrets charge and substituted copyright infringement among a bunch of other things.

The infringement stemmed from the fact that IBM didn't stop distributing AIX and Dynix after SCO terminated IBM's Unix licenses last year.

And, well, if the copyright claims are tossed out - and IBM would also like the court to declare SCO's copyrights "invalid and unenforceable" - then IBM wants a declaratory judgment that it hasn't infringed anything, which would - like SCO's idea but from a different approach - get the mess back to being a contract dispute.

Of course those copyrights are pretty controversial. Novell says it didn't sell them to SCO and that its retained rights trump whatever rights SCO does have so SCO can't terminate IBM license, which IBM says is perpetual anyway, but just in case it's not then Novell forgave IBM for putting derivative Unix code from AIX and Dynix in Linux. Got that?

As IBM told the court, "SCO has continued to misrepresent that it can, or will, or has in fact revoked IBM's rights to use Unix System V, without disclosing that IBM's rights to Unix System V are not terminable or that Novell has exercised its right to waive any contractual rights SCO claims IBM violated."

And while IBM wants SCO's copyright claims expunged, it added to its own list of alleged copyright claims against SCO. The claims derive from SCO allegedly not sticking by the GPL under which IBM licensed it certain technologies.

• SCO Wants Suit It Filed Against Novell in Federal Court Moved to State Court
• SCO People Can't Look at IBM's AIX & Dynix Source Code
• SCO Suits Could Boomerang
• SCO Insurance Unveiled
• SCO Asks for Five-Month Delay in IBM Trial