Asserting it holds the rights to the Unix operating system, SCO's Australia/New Zealand subsidiary is demanding licence fees of A$285 ($320) per desktop and A$999 per server from all Linux users. SCO says that Linux contains code copied from Unix, but to date its claims remain unproven.

Asked if SCO ANZ's demands for licence fees could be a breach of the Fair Trading Act, Commerce Commission's spokeswoman Jackie Maitland says its preliminary view is that "no one should pay an invoice unless they are clear on the obligation to pay". Furthermore, Maitland says that "it is not clear that SCO are entitled to charge end-users who have downloaded a product on the condition they understood the product was free".

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