| Aftershocks: SCO and Novell on the Novell/SCO court decision |
Aug. 13, 2007
Although Novell has won clear title to Unix's IP (intellectual property) rights, SCO isn't ready to throw in the towel yet.
On Aug. 10, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball has ruled that Novell, not SCO, owns Unix's IP rights. This, in turn, means the beginning of the end of SCO's cases against IBM, Red Hat and other Linux-using companies.
The SCO Group isn't sure exactly what it will try to do next in the face of the court's damning decision, but the Unix company isn't ready to give up on its lawsuits quite yet.
In a statement, SCO said that it "is obviously disappointed with the ruling issued last Friday. 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."
According to SCO, this means SCO owns "the new development in all subsequent versions of UnixWare up through the most current release of UnixWare and substantial portions of SCO UnixWare Gemini 64. Also, SCO owns the exclusive, worldwide license to the UnixWare trademark, now owned by The Open Group. SCO's ownership of OpenServer and its Mobile Server platforms were not challenged and remain intact."
These issues, however, were not of material interest in the Novell case.
If SCO continues to try to fight, the issues that might conceivably make a difference are that "the court did not dismiss our claims against Novell regarding the non compete provisions of the 1995 Technology License Agreement relating to Novell's distribution of Linux to the extent implicated by the technology developed by SCO after 1995. Those issues remain to be litigated."
Even SCO, though, isn't sure how much can be made from these points. "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."
So, while SCO is keeping the door open to continuing its court fights, it has not committed to spending even more of its resources on an appeal or pushing the remaining issues to trial.
Joe LaSala, Novell's senior vice president and general counsel, sees the court's ruling as a complete victory for Novell and Linux. In a statement, LaSala said, "In the spring of 2003, Novell set out to ensure that SCO's groundless claims would not interfere with the development of Linux. Today's 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. We are extremely pleased with the outcome."
Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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