[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Back to this year:

Aftershocks: SCO and Novell on the Novell/SCO court decision
Aug. 13, 2007

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Although Novell has won clear title to Unix's IP (intellectual property) rights, SCO isn't ready to throw in the towel yet.

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On Aug. 10, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball has ruled that Novell, not SCO, owns Unix's IP rights. This, in turn, means the beginning of the end of SCO's cases against IBM, Red Hat and other Linux-using companies.

The SCO Group isn't sure exactly what it will try to do next in the face of the court's damning decision, but the Unix company isn't ready to give up on its lawsuits quite yet.

In a statement, SCO said that it "is obviously disappointed with the ruling issued last Friday. However, 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."

According to SCO, this means SCO owns "the new development in all subsequent versions of UnixWare up through the most current release of UnixWare and substantial portions of SCO UnixWare Gemini 64. Also, SCO owns the exclusive, worldwide license to the UnixWare trademark, now owned by The Open Group. SCO's ownership of OpenServer and its Mobile Server platforms were not challenged and remain intact."

These issues, however, were not of material interest in the Novell case.

If SCO continues to try to fight, the issues that might conceivably make a difference are that "the court did not dismiss our claims against Novell regarding the non compete provisions of the 1995 Technology License 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."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Now back to the present (from Groklaw):

SCO Asks Judge Kimball for an Entry of Final Judgment So It Can Appeal Some Issues Immediately - Updated
Wednesday, August 29 2007 @ 06:29 PM EDT

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I gather SCO has noticed that the SCO v. IBM litigation won't be nearly so annoying to IBM unless it does something fast about Judge Dale Kimball's August 10th ruling, which pared that case, like all of SCO's cases, down to almost nothing but the counterclaims against SCO.

So it's asking the court to enter a final judgment on certain matters the ruling decided, so it can seek an immediate appeal on those issues, such as whether it owns the UNIX and Unixware copyrights after all and whether Novell has the authority to tell SCO to waive any purported breach of contract by licensees. Those are the two that shot arrows straight through SCO's heart. Well. The heart of its litigation. I believe the evidence before us demonstrates that SCO is a corporation, and hence it has no heart.

Otherwise, SCO has to wait until Novell goes through trial to a verdict and then appeal, and while it is in the appeal process, IBM would go forward in its now much smaller version, based on the August 10th ruling. SCO would rather appeal right away so it can try all its claims in IBM, should it successfully appeal the judge's order. The trial starts, though, in less than a month and it will last less than a week, so none of this makes any sense if you look at a calendar. I think, therefore, it must be about FUD, so it sounds like SCO is on the move again or something.