Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

November 25, 2008

A U.S. federal judge has ordered that SCO pays Novell another $2.54 Million in damages, insisting that the Utah company was unjustly enriched by a licensing agreement with Sun Microsystems that occurred more than five-and-a-half years ago.

On Nov. 20, judge Dale Kimball issued his final judgment in the seemingly-endless legal face-off between SCO and Novell.

The Court's judgment effectively kills SCO's attempt to waive certain claims and then resurrect them on appeal, and it also reiterates a July 2008 ruling that SCO must pay Novell $2,547,817, plus interest, for unilaterally agreeing to amend Sun's license for the Unix SVRX copyrights.

The Interest alone exceeds $904,000.

SCO could still appeal if it wants too, but you have to wonder how long it can keep this up. The company no longer sells anything of note, and in September of last year, it filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy protection.

Early this year, a private equity firm agreed to resuscitate SCO with a $100 Million cash infusion, but the firm has since abandoned the deal, and SCO no longer has the cash needed to pay Novell.

In 1999, Novell sold its Unix trademarks and other assets to SCO, and SCO was quite sure that the deal included the Unix copyrights as well. So sure in fact that it started waving them at the Linux industry, entering licensing agreements with the likes of Sun and suing everyone from IBM right down to DaimlerChrysler.

These legal squabbles began with SCO suing Novell, and not the other way around...

Four-and-a-half years ago, SCO filed a slander of title action suit accusing Novell of improperly laying claim to the Unix SVRX copyrights.

However, in August 2007, Judge Kimball ruled that the copyrights were in fact Novell's. Now with the Nov. 20 Court ruling, it appears the Judge has finally put SCO into the grave for good.

However, SCO has a habit of returning from the dead all the time... We will see this time.

Not surprisingly, SCO's legal scuffles haven't gone unnoticed in the Linux community, and the bankrupt company still managed to make istelf a lot of enemies in the process, especially in open source circles.

Most observers now think there's almost no way it can return from the grave.

Source: SDK News.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

ADVERTISERS:
Linux News Today.org is read by over 450,000 people involved in the field of Linux application development, professional Web hosting services, Linux security, Linux Web development, etc. Inquire about our reasonable advertising rates on our news website. One of our advertising representatives will be in touch with you. Simply email us to learn about our ad rates and how we can help drive relevant traffic to your website. Advertising space is limited.