SCO case: one more step in a tortuous saga

By Sam Varghese
Friday, 18 July 2008 12:25

Opinion and Analysis

Another step was taken this week in the tortuous case which the SCO Group initiated against IBM in March 2003 - but by no means is an end anywhere in sight to the company's misery. Unlike Neil Armstrong's historic statement, it is not a giant step for anyone.


Some background - SCO sued IBM for breach of contract in March 2003, claiming that the latter had contributed code to the Linux kernel which it did not own, code which had been developed in conjunction with SCO. SCO claimed to have rights to all the IP for UNIX, which it said it had purchased in toto from Novell in 1995.

Novell then got into the picture, claiming that it had not sold the entire rights to SCO. In August last year, the court decided that Novell was in the right and SCO did not, in fact, own the IP rights to UNIX.

The latest development in the long-running saga has seen Novell being awarded $US2.55 million by the Utah District Court; this money is supposed to cover the royalties which Novell lost when SCO sold code which Novell owned.

Two of the prominent code deals were with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. According to the court judgement, SCO received a little over $US16.5 million from the deal with Microsoft. Sun's deal was for a shade over $US9.1 million.

The court concluded that SCO's deals with Microsoft and numerous lesser entities were kosher; however, the deal with Sun was not, as Novell had an earlier agreement with Sun in 1994 which placed certain restrictions on the release of source code for 20 years.