SCO Files Notice of Appeal in Novell Litigation

[Jerry Feldman]

 From Groklaw
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081125183259772

Tuesday, November 25 2008 @ 06:57 PM EST

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

In this case, the issue of who owns the Unix IP was decided officially 
by Federal Judge Dale Kimball on November 20th, 2008 (based on his 
ruling August 2007). This has an impact on Linux since SCO (in SCO vs. 
IBM) claims that the Linux system is polluted, and that SCO owns the 
rights. Judge Kimball ruled that SCO never owned the copyrights or 
patents on Unix when its predecessor, Santa Cruz, bought the rights to 
license Unix. The bottom line for Linux is, if Novell retains its claim 
to Unix, Linux is free and clear since Novell has already waived its 
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 
SCO the rights (worst case) or push it back down to a lower court and 
the whole thing starts again. Most of the Linux community is would be 
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 
Chapter 11, and their SCO vs. IBM is under stay, as is the SCO vs. SuSE 
arbitration.


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

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