SCO, Novell back in court Monday in Unix fight

by Todd R. Weiss

September 14, 2007 —

The SCO Group Inc. will begin its latest legal battle Monday over what it continues to assert are its rights to Unix -- but this battle is one the company may have never imagined it would be fighting.

This time, instead of being on the offensive against Novell Inc., which SCO sued in 2004 alleging that Novell falsely claimed it held the rights to Unix, the tables have been partially turned on the company.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball in Salt Lake City undercut much of SCO's case in a ruling that declared Novell the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights. As a result, a bench trial will determine how much money SCO might now have to pay Novell for Unix licensing revenue it received from Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

In his ruling, the judge said SCO must turn over a portion of that revenue to Novell since SCO didn't own the rights to Unix and UnixWare, yet collected the revenue. SCO disputes that assertion and is expected to argue that it owes Novell nothing.

The disputed revenue -- for all versions of Unix System V code -- is the focus of the legal battle between the two companies.

Testimony is expected to take four or five days to complete, followed by the judge's ruling sometime in the next month or so. Spokespeople for both companies declined to comment Wednesday on the legal wrangling.

SCO and Novell have been fighting over who legally owns the rights to Unix and UnixWare since 2003. That's when SCO sued IBM in what became a US$5 billion lawsuit, alleging that IBM illegally contributed some of SCO's Unix code to the then-fledgling Linux open-source project. SCO sued Novell directly in 2004. Novell filed counterclaims against SCO that disputed SCO's case.

Last week, in an interview with Computerworld, SCO CEO Darl McBride said his company will continue to fight its legal case, despite the recent setbacks.

The battle between SCO and IBM is not expected to start until next year and is expected to be affected by the results of the SCO-Novell fight.

Computerworld