Jury decides in favor of Novell in SCO vs. Novell

[Jerry Feldman]

The basic issue here was a Slander charge because Novell claimed that
they owned the Unix copyrights. They won by summary judgment in the
first trial that SCO appealed. This trial was with a different judge
(Judge Stewart) and a jury, and the verdict is that Novell never sold
Santa Cruz the copyrights.

This will not end the SCO litigations, but it certainly will lift a
cloud from Linux since it was the SCO vs. IBM trial where DCO was trying
to prove that IBM contributed IP to the Linux kernel.

Today, SCO is a much different company, because in Chapter 11, Darl
McBride was terminated and Judge Edward Cahn was appointed as Chapter 11
Trustee. I'm not sure if this will place the final pin in SCO's coffin,
but they just got a substantial loan from Ralph Yarrow.

So, where does this place the SCO vs. IBM litigation. Since Novell as
already waived its copyright claims, there is not much left to the SCO
vs. IBM suit, which is in Judge Kimball's court. SCO is still in
bankruptcy, so it's hard to tell where this will go.

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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