SCO group wins Unix copyright appeal

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SCO Group, whose six-year-old legal case arguing Linux infringes its Unix copyright has not been enough to keep it from bankruptcy court, nevertheless won an important victory in its case on Monday.

A federal judge had earlier ruled that Novell had retained Unix copyrights when it sold its Unix business to the Santa Cruz Operation, a company whose Unix assets SCO Group later acquired.

However, the appeals court overturned that decision, based in part on a close reading of the Unix asset purchase agreement, sending the matter to trial for a decision. Yet the appeals court did uphold a ruling that SCO owed Novell royalty payments, according to a 55-page filing.

SCO Group chief executive Darl McBride was happy with the decision. "Today is not the end of the war but it certainly is a key battle that we've won," he said in a statement in the Salt Lake Tribune. "Now it's time to move on to the next series of battles with our victory in hand."

Talkback

They have actually lost, in that the court has confirmed they owe Novel a LOT of money.

As for unix ownership, this still has to be decided in a full court heraing, so I don't see how any intelligent person could interpret that as a win. But then, this is SCO we're talking about.

Tezzer 26 August, 2009 09:10
Reply

The whole can of worms has been reopened, and it would appear that the that lack of clarity, for whatever reasons, in the original documents leaves the outcome open to interpretation either way.

None the less, I am puzzled by the apparent contradiction in the ruling of the Appeal's Court.

SCO has done no good to Unix or Linux, or the case for freedom, choice, innovation etc., and there really is only one sure winner from all this and it's not SCO. Actually, there are two or three if you include the lawyers and other hangers on, whose 'costs', one way or another, must fall on us, joe public .

In passing, I hardly think the judgement was made in 'haste'. Looking from the outside in, it's often quite hard to see US judgements as impartial and, incidentally, humane.

Moley 26 August, 2009 14:05
Reply

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