A little background - a couple of years ago, SCO sued IBM for its use of Linux, claiming that it illegally transferred pieces of Unix into Linux.  IBM countersued, and they've been fighting ever since.  One key question is whether or not SCO actually owns the Unix copyrights that they are suing IBM about.  SCO had bought Unix from Novell, but Novell claims they retained the copyrights.  If Novell did retain the copyrights, then SCO's case against IBM is on extremely shaky ground.  Novell sued SCO about the copyrights, and the judge has now rendered his judgment.


This is one judge that doesn't beat around the bush.  SCO has been trying to snow him for many years, and he has seen through all of it.  The short of it is that Novell owns the Unix copyrights.  This tears apart SCO's case.  And that is just the start of their problems.

See, in the contract where SCO bought the Unix software packages, Novell retained the right to manage how SCO uses Unix.  SCO essentially bought the right to continue developing Unix, and to sell further Unix rights to companies while passing some percentage of profits back to Novell.  Novell wanted to make sure that SCO treated current licensees of Unix fairly, so they retained the right to tell SCO what to do in these cases.  And, IBM is one of these cases.  Soon after SCO sued IBM, Novell waived SCO's right to sue, so SCO should have folded up the lawsuit then.  Of course they didn't.  The result of all of this is not only does SCO no longer have much of a case against IBM, but Novell has the right to tell them not to sue, and has done so.  They should have no choice but to pack it up.

This will be brutally damaging to the company.  They have already paid their lawyers millions in fees, and they don't have much in the bank.  Now, all of that cash and more will be due to Novell since SCO never paid them for a couple of licenses they sold to Microsoft and Sun.

Where they decide to go from here will be very interesting to see.

Posted by: jcallery at 01:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 369 words, total size 2 kb.