In a 102-page ruling (PDF), Judge Dale Kimball has dealt what many see as the killing blow in SCO‘s infamous lawsuit against Novell over copyrights to the Unix operating system, finding that Novell is the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights. The ruling lifts a cloud from over the Linux and free software movements, which could have faced serious copyright and intellectual property issues if SCO had proven a claim to Unix copyrights and tried to assert them against 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," Novell said in a statement on its Web site. 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."
For its part, SCO says it is "disappointed" with the ruling, but vows to keep on with remaining points in the case. "The case has not yet been fully vetted by the legal system and we will continue to explore our options with respect to how we move forward from here," the company said in a brief statement. SCO retains derivative copyrights to its versions of Unix, including OpenServer and Unixware.
The suit got its start in 1996, when Novell sold some of its assets to SCO. However, Novell has steadfastly claimed the Unix copyrights were not part of the asset sale. SCO countered (essentially) there was no way it would have paid money for Unix and not acquired the copyrights. However, Judge Kimball’s ruling makes clear that SCO was purchasing the right to develop their own Unix-based products, and not acquiring rights to Unix itself.
As part of his ruling, Judge Kimball said Novell may direct SCO to waive its related claim against IBM, which was based on the premise that SCO owned copyrights to Unix: SCO claimed IBM introduced intellectual property from Unix into Linux, and therefore violated SCO’s copyrights. Now that SCO has been found never to have owned those copyrights, the claim is moot. SCO will also be required to forfeit 95 percent of the revenues derived from licensing Unix copyrights to companies like Microsoft and Sun. Some of that money will go to Novell.
The ruling also means SCO will likely lose a related case brought by Novell claiming slander of title; however, SCO may be still be able to extract copyright infringement damages from Novell based non-compete clauses in the original agreement and SCO’s confirmed ownership of derivative copyrights. The legal maneuvering may be far from over, and SCO may continue to protract the battle as a way to reduce its losses.
