Jury tells SCO it doesn't own Unix

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SCO took a heavy blow today in the drawn out battle with Novell over Unix copyrights.

After a three week trial, the jury at the District Court of Utah decided that Novell did indeed own the Unix patents, despite SCO's claims that it owned Unix copyrights after being sold the source code 15 years ago.

SCO has sued both IBM and Novell, saying the pair infringed its Unix patents and owed it royalties for the licences sold on to others.

Ron Hovsepian, Novell president and chief executive, welcomed the decision.

"This decision is good news for Novell, for Linux, and for the open source community," he said in a statement.

"We have long contended that this effort against Linux has no foundation, and we are pleased that the jury, in a unanimous decision, agrees," he added. "I am proud of Novell's role in protecting the best interests of Linux and the open source community."

"It's an important win for the open-source community because SCO had argued there was protected Unix in Linux and had sought substantial licensing fees from Linux users based on that claim," Novell's lawyer Mike Jacobs said.

SCO wasn't so pleased. The firm's trial lawyer Stuart Singer said: "Obviously, we're disappointed in the jury's decision."

"We were confident in the case, but there's some important claims remaining to be decided by a judge," he said, adding SCO will still ask the judge to hand the copyrights over. "It's a setback, but it's not over."

Read on for more about why SCO refuses to lie down in the long-running court battle.

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