SCO Files Notice of Appeal in Novell Litigation

[Jerry Feldman]

 From Groklaw
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=3D20081125183259772

Tuesday, November 25 2008 @ 06:57 PM EST

SCO has filed a notice of appeal in the SCO v. Novell litigation, as=20
they said they would:
---

In this case, the issue of who owns the Unix IP was decided officially=20
by Federal Judge Dale Kimball on November 20th, 2008 (based on his=20
ruling August 2007). This has an impact on Linux since SCO (in SCO vs.=20
IBM) claims that the Linux system is polluted, and that SCO owns the=20
rights. Judge Kimball ruled that SCO never owned the copyrights or=20
patents on Unix when its predecessor, Santa Cruz, bought the rights to=20
license Unix. The bottom line for Linux is, if Novell retains its claim=20
to Unix, Linux is free and clear since Novell has already waived its=20
rights in the IBM case, thus shooting down SCO's claims. However, if the =

appeals court decides to reverse Kimball, then either they could give=20
SCO the rights (worst case) or push it back down to a lower court and=20
the whole thing starts again. Most of the Linux community is would be=20
covered by various protections by HP, IBM, Red Hat, et. al.

The problem here is that whenever something goes into a courtroom, there =

is a certain amount of uncertainty. My question is where can SCO come up =

with the funds to followup on the appeal since they are already in=20
Chapter 11, and their SCO vs. IBM is under stay, as is the SCO vs. SuSE=20
arbitration.


--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846