IBM Accused by Xinuos of Using Stolen Code to Build Monopoly (1)

IBM Corp. was hit with federal antitrust and copyright claims in the Virgin Islands on Wednesday over an alleged scheme to steal software code from Xinuos Inc., divide up the Unix/Linux server operating system market with Red Hat Inc., and then merge with it to “solidify” its dominance.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of the Virgin Islands, accuses IBM and its wholly owned subsidiary Red Hat of protecting an illegitimate monopoly through “abusive and illegal practices” that threaten to bring about “the end of open source” software.

Those tactics have “strangled innovation” and let ...