David M Williams
Monday, 12 January 2009 09:08
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Claims and counter-claims made by both sides escalated. IBM and Red Hat commenced legal action against SCO. SCO threatened Linux users they needed to purchase SCO UNIX licenses. SCO sued Novell, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler.
Yet, despite this flurry of legal activity, nothing much happened for a long time.
Late in 2003 SCO requested a delay until February 2004. This was amended again to 2005. Then the trial date was vacated in December 2006 pending the resolution of SCO v. Novell, with all parties agreeing that the SCO v. Novell case would effectively resolve issues relating to SCO v. IBM, despite that being the initial case.
Nevertheless, on August 10th, 2007, Judge Kimball ruled that Novell, not The SCO Group, is the rightful owner of copyrights covering the UNIX operating system. Further, the Judge stipulated SCO were obliged to recognise Novell’s waiver of claims against IBM.
Novell publicly stated they had no interest in suing people over UNIX and stated that there is no breach of UNIX copyright within Linux.
SCO subsequently filed for bankruptcy on September 14th 2007, having expended enormous amounts of money – and most certainly expending the good name the Santa Cruz Operation had previously established.
You would be forgiven if you thought that was the end of the matter; SCO had done their dash and failed spectacularly.
Yet, in a remarkable twist of fate, SCO are now back on the scene and wanting to pick up where they left off.
CONTINUED
