14 DAY TRIAL // The Linux world can breathe a collective sigh of relief, as a US federal jury has finally ruled on the long-running legal battle between Novell and SCO over the rights of the Unix operating system. The jury found that the rights belonged to Novell, meaning that SCO's threats of going after Linux vendors for allegedly shipping proprietary Unix code have absolutely no legal basis. This on top of the fact that Linux doesn't actually incorporate any Unix code, a small detail SCO chose to ignore.
"Today, the jury in the District Court of Utah trial between SCO Group and Novell issued a verdict," the short announcement on Novell's website read. "Novell is very pleased with the jury’s decision confirming Novell’s ownership of the Unix copyrights, which SCO had asserted to own in its attack on Linux. Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on the intellectual property front. This decision is good news for Novell, for Linux, and for the open source community," it continued.
Novell kept it short and simple, but the announcement condenses everything the company could have said. Novell stood up for Linux, spending a lot of money doing so, and justice was, again, on its side. Obviously, the company is one of the world's biggest Linux vendors, so it would have had everything to lose if SCO had managed to sway the decision its way.
This ends a 7-year ordeal in which Novell has had to defend its IP while SCO continued to make, what have now been proven to be, empty threats. Initially, SCO sued IBM claiming that Linux infringed on Unix to which it owned the rights. But, in 2003, Novell stepped in to claim that it was in fact the rightful rights owner of Unix and that SCO had no base for its accusations.
In 2007, a judge found that Novell did indeed own the rights, but SCO appealed and asked for a jury trial. It eventually got its jury trial, which, unsurprisingly, ended with the very same conclusion. At this point, you'd expect SCO to finally admit defeat, but this doesn't seem to be the case. The company says that it plans to continue its initial lawsuit against IBM, this time citing breach of contract. That is, of course, if it can manage to find someone to finance its increasingly desperate legal battle.