The SCO Group's attack on Linux has been weakened
following a key legal ruling in its case against
Novell.
A US judge has ruled that Novell, and not SCO, owns copyrights
over Unix. The Utah court judge said Novell is the owner of Unix
and UnixWare copyrights, and threw out SCO's charges of slander and
breach of contract.
In addition, the judge said a portion of licensing revenue SCO
received from Sun and
Microsoft for software use should be paid to Novell. This
weakens the position of loss-making SCO even further.
In an even bigger blow, the judge said that because Novell is
the owner of the Unix copyrights, it can order SCO to end its
ongoing legal attacks on IBM and others over Linux
distribution.
SCO started its legal battle against IBM in 2003, claiming it
had wrongly contributed Unix code in the development of Linux. It
sued Novell in 2004 over Unix rights.
SCO said it may appeal the decision. If the judgement prevails,
Linux users will be in a stronger legal position if any action is
taken against them for using the open-source OS.
More on the judgement can be viewed on the
Groklaw open-source
legal website.