Meanwhile, DaimlerChrysler has asked a Michigan court to throw out the suit SCO brought against it claiming there's "no genuine issue of material fact" in SCO's case.

SCO sued because the car company refused to certify that it was abiding by its 14-year-old Unix license with AT&T's Unix System Labs and not running Linux binaries anywhere.

DaimlerChrysler told the court that although it didn't have to it gave SCO a letter on April 6 saying it hasn't used Unix in seven years.

Autozone, which SCO has charged with infringing its Unix System V copyrights, claims the underlying issues are the same in all four cases and that resolving the IBM and Red Hat cases should come first and establish, or at least clarify, whether SCO has the goods to prevail in the Autozone case, namely, that its Unix copyrights are valid and enforceable and that Linux infringes those rights.

To persuade the court to grant a stay, Autozone's lawyers pointed out that Red Hat's case against SCO, filed in Delaware, was shelved until the IBM case is decided to avoid the waste of duplicative litigation.

Autozone wants to wait until after the Red Hat case is resolved.

If the court doesn't buy granting a stay and insists on parallel tracks, then Autozone wants the court to order SCO to detail its complaint. Labeling SCO's charges "broad," it wants to know how it infringes any rights in Unix and what portions of Linux or Unix are at issue so it can defend itself.

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