page_title: Unix System Laboratories
section_title: Partial spinoff from AT&T
hierarchical_section_title: Unix System Laboratories / Partial spinoff from AT&T
caption_attribution_description: English: The front side of a Unix System Laboratories 9 x 12 inch presentation folder, that was also available to employees for the handling of papers. The folder has pockets on the inside and is from around 1993.
context_page_description: Unix System Laboratories, sometimes written UNIX System Laboratories to follow relevant trademark guidelines of the time, was an American software laboratory and product development company that existed from 1989 through 1993. At first wholly, and then majority, owned by AT&T, it was responsible for the development and maintenance of one of the main branches of the Unix operating system, the UNIX System V Release 4 source code product. Through Univel, a partnership with Novell, it was also responsible for the development and production of the UnixWare packaged operating system for Intel architecture. In addition it developed Tuxedo, a transaction processing monitor, and was responsible for certain products related to the C++ programming language. USL was based in Summit, New Jersey, and its CEOs were Larry Dooling followed by Roel Pieper.
  Created from earlier AT&T entities, USL was, as industry writer Christopher Negus has observed, the culmination of AT&T's long involvement in Unix, "a jewel that couldn't quite find a home or a way to make a profit." USL was sold to Novell in 1993.
context_section_description: In April 1991, USL became partly independent of AT&T when about 22 percent of it, worth about $65 million, was sold to eleven outside computer vendors: Amdahl, Motorola, Novell, Sun, ICL, Olivetti, Fujitsu, NEC, OKI Electric, Toshiba, and the Institute for Information Industry.  There was a stated goal to lessen the control AT&T had over Unix, which would lead to  USL becoming a publicly owned company within three years.
  An AT&T executive said, "AT&T is convinced that the best way to nurture the growth of the open systems movement and to share into it ourselves is to establish an independent Unix Systems Laboratory with the technical guidance of Unix International and the business advice of investors who will ensure that USL is run properly and profitably."
  By this point USL had some 500 employees, 2400 customers, and annual revenue around the $100 million mark.  AT&T said that USL had been profitable since its inception in 1989.
  USL got a new president and CEO in November 1991 when Dooling was replaced by the Dutchman Roel Pieper, formerly chief technical officer of Software AG.
  USL was aggressive in defending its perceived intellectual property rights, initiating as the plaintiff a lawsuit in 1992 against Berkeley Software Design makers of  and the Regents of the University of California over copyrights and trademarks related to Unix.  The case was known as UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. v. Berkeley Software Design, Inc. and in it USL asked the court for a preliminary injunction that would bar the Berkeley firm and the university from distributing their Net/2 operating system release, which was implied to be Unix, until the case was concluded.  In response the university filed a countersuit against AT&T for alleged breaches in the licensing agreement the two parties had.  (The case was settled out of court in January 1994.)
caption: USL presentation folder, made starting 1991
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