Novell wins major ruling in SCO case

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Novell has won a significant ruling in its long-running battle with SCO.

A judge in the US District Court for the District of Utah has ruled that Novell is the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights, dismissing SCO's charges of slander and breach of contract.

As a result, the ruling said SCO now owes Novell a portion of the licensing revenue it has collected from Sun and Microsoft, although the actual amounts owed will need to be determined in a trial.

The judge also said that, as a result of the ruling, Novell can now direct SCO to abandon its similar suits against IBM and Sequant, given the fact it does not own the rights to the disputed code.

Novell said in a statement the ruling had effectively killed off SCO's case and eliminated any uncertainty it had fostered in the Linux community.

SCO said it was disappointed with the ruling, but that many issues remain unresolved. It said in a statement: "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.

"What's more, the court did not dismiss our claims against Novell regarding the non-compete provisions of the 1995 Technology Licence 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."

The complexity of the issues involved has led the presiding judge to ask all parties involved to file documents outlining all the outstanding issues pertaining to the case by 31 August. And last week's ruling means Novell's counter-claim of slander against SCO will still have to go trial.

The case began in 2003 when SCO filed suit against IBM for Unix copyright infringement in using the code in its contributions to Linux. It then sued Novell a year later, saying Novell had falsely claimed rights to Unix.

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