Is SCO dead?
A late Friday ruling from the judge in the U.S. District Court for the
District of Utah Central District may have put the proverbial nail in the
coffin for SCO’s Unix claims.
“The court concludes that Novell is the owner of the Unix and UnixWare
copyrights,” Judge Dale Kimball said in a summary judgment ruling in
response to numerous requests and motions from both SCO and Novell.
Novell and SCO have been embroiled in a bitter three-year-old dispute over who owns certain Unix trademarks. SCO claims it
purchased all rights from Novell in 1995, which Novell disagreed
with.
Kimball’s ruling also dismissed SCO counterclaims on slander. The ruling
also has direct impact on SCO’s case against IBM where SCO alleges that IBM
improperly took Unix code and put it into Linux. The judge ruled that Novell
is entitled “to direct SCO to waive its claims against IBM and Sequent,
and SCO is obligated to recognize Novell’s waiver of SCO’s claims against
IBM and Sequent.”
Though the wording of the ruling may make it seem clear that Novell in fact
is the owner of the Unix copyrights, the full text of the ruling is some 112
pages long and may well leave SCO with some wiggle room.
In a statement posted on its site, SCO remained defiant in the face what
appears to be devastating defeat.
“The company is obviously disappointed with the ruling issued last Friday,”
SCO states. “However, the court clearly determined that SCO owns the
copyrights to the technology developed or derived by SCO after Novell
transferred the assets to SCO in 1995.”
SCO also claims that the ruling does not dispute the fact that SCO owns the
UnixWare trademark, which is the basis of SCO’s current Unix offerings.
“Although the district judge ruled in Novell’s favor on important issues,
the case has not yet been fully vetted by the legal system, and we will
continue to explore our options with respect to how we move forward from
here,” SCO said in its statement.
Judge Kimball’s ruling if upheld could also result in SCO being forced to
pay a currently undetermined sum to Novell as part of the original 1995
agreement.
Novell’s Joe LaSala, senior vice president and general counsel was very
positive about the ruling. In a statement published on the Novell Web site,
LaSala said that the court ruling vindicates the position Novell has taken
since the inception of the dispute with SCO, and it settles the issue of who
owns the copyrights of Unix in Novell’s favor.
“The court’s ruling has cut out the core of SCO’s case and, as a result,
eliminates SCO’s threat to the Linux community based upon allegations of
copyright infringement of Unix,” LaSala said in the statement. “We are
extremely pleased with the outcome.”
If past rulings are any indication, though, this case is still not a done
deal, and SCO may have a glimmer of hope. Every time the judge has
issued a pre-trial ruling, SCO has appealed. The actual trial is still
scheduled to start on Sept. 17, though it is unclear at this point if
that will still occur.
SCO stock took a beating on Monday morning, down over 70
percent to 44 cents. The decline in SCO’s stock is in stark contrast to the
stock’s recent recovery, having been at risk of being de-listed from the NASDAQ.
