Novell wins Unix victory over SCO

THE JUDGE presiding over the SCO v. Novell slander of title lawsuit has issued a flurry of partial summary judgement rulings that must be viewed as crushing defeats for SCO.

In a 102 page order (PDF), Utah Federal District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball decided numerous motions for summary judgement that had been flung on his desk by both sides. The most significant of these rulings are, in effect, that:

Novell owns the UNIX SVRX and UnixWare copyrights; Novell has the right, at its sole discretion, to direct SCO to waive its claims against IBM and Sequent; and SCO owes Novell payment for the UNIX SVRX licences it sold to Microsoft and Sun.

The judge also dismissed SCO's slander of title, non-compete and unfair competition claims against Novell, but left at issue for trial Novell's cross-claim against SCO for slander of title. However, he declined to grant Novell's request for a constructive trust confiscating SCO's assets to cover SCO's SVRX licence liabilities, because the actual amount at stake is a factual issue yet to be determined.

Thus SCO v. Novell might still go to trial in about six weeks or so, unless of course the parties settle out of court before then. But now, following these summary judgement rulings, the trial will be all about Novell's claim of SCO's slander of title, how much SCO owes Novell for having sold those SVRX licences to Microsoft and Sun, and possibly how much in punitive damages a jury might want SCO to pay.

Joe LaSala, Novell's senior vice president and general counsel, released the following statement about the rulings on Novell's PR blog:

"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."

The second summary judgement ruling listed above in SCO v. Novell will likely also have devastating knock-on effects on bad boy SCO's claims in the SCO v. IBM lawsuit which is scheduled to go to trial later. µ

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