SCO owes Novell: final ruling
By Miya Knights,
The Utah federal judge presiding over the long-running SCO Unix copyright case issued his final ruling on proceedings.
Judge Dale Kimball has ordered the ailing firm to finally cough up more than $2.5 million (£1.65 million) in royalties it owed Novell, plus interest, which runs to over $900,000 (£594,295).
But the saga may refuse to go away, as the ailing suitor has indicated it may appeal, arguing that the judge’s original 2007 ruling was made before the full facts of the case had been agreed.
This final ruling quashes SCO’s attempts to waive some of the claims in case of any appeal and reiterates his order this July to pay Novell the damages in restitution for Unix royalties SCO collected from Sun Microsystems without Novell's permission.
The original ruling sent SCO’s fortunes into freefall, as it was first delisted from the Nasdaq, then involved in a failed £100-million (£66.03-million) capital investment injection while trying to sell of the Unix business, and finally file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late last year.
The saga all began when SCO originally brought the slander of title action suit against first IBM and then Novell, for infringing its Unix SVRX copyrights. But it emerged that, having bought the Unix trademarks from Novell a decade before, SCO assumed it also owned the rights to enter into open source licence deals with Sun, as well as other end-user firms.
But when Kimball ruled the copyrights had, in fact, been Novell’s all along, SCO was faced with a bill it couldn’t pay.
Pamela Jones, the respected legal voice behind the Groklaw blog commented: “Now it's on to an appeal, if SCO can afford it, I suppose. As SCO's lawyer, Arthur Spector, told the court at the September hearing in the bankruptcy, that could take a year and a half or it could take five.”
You may also like...
advertisement
Latest Server Features
FreeBSD and the GPL
Linus Torvalds has said Linux wouldn't have happened if 386BSD had been around when he started up. We trace the history of FreeBSD and how it's affected the open source world.
- Top 10 technologies for SMBs
- Slackware Linux - Less is more
- Year in Review: 2009 in your words
- Year in Review: Top tech stories of 2009
- How CERN helps test Intel's tech
- Q&A: Citrix's CTO on why the cloud needs virtualisation
- Q&A: Intel’s enterprise head on the Nehalem effect
- IDF: Five tech predictions
- Has Linux gained too much weight?
Latest Server Reviews
HP ProLiant DL4x170h review
Rating: ![]()
advertisement
Most popular
- Google updates Chrome, awards security bonus
- Why is Microsoft accelerating Service Pack 1?
- Report: Macs cost less to run than Windows PCs
- Your Views: Google Street View across the UK
- Q&A: Conrad Wolfram on communicating with apps in Web 3.0
- O2 condemns 'bullying' law firms for threatening file-sharers
- Windows Phone 7 review ? hands on
- Dell Vostro V13 review
- Digital Economy Bill to cost ISPs up to £500 million
- Reviews round-up: Windows Phone 7 and Firefox Mobile
Latest News Videos in Server
Video: How to setup online data backup
We show you how to set yourself up with online data backup using popular services such as Carbonite and Mozy.
Whitepapers
Want more background on today's hottest IT trends?
Visit IT PRO's whitepaper library for more on virtualisation, encryption and other topics.
Register for IT PRO
You'll get exclusive member benefits including free whitepapers, downloads, Webinars and weekly newsletters full of the latest IT PRO news, reviews, insight and expertise.





