May 6, 2009, 2:39 pm
SCO, the dying Utah UNIX vendor, could finally be headed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidation. The US Trustee representing the Justice Department in SCO’s bankruptcy proceedings has filed a motion to dissolve the company, asserting that its repeated attempts at reorganization have failed and that it has practically no hope of recovering. CEO Darl McBride says that SCO intends to fight the motion.
SCO achieved infamy by attempting to sue users of the open source Linux operating system, alleging that Linux misappropriated intellectual property from UNIX. In 2007, a judge ruled that Novell is the rightful owner of the original SVRX UNIX copyrights and not SCO. Without standing to bring a lawsuit over SVRX copyright infringement, SCO could not proceed with its litigation against Linux users. During the case, evidence emerged which unambiguously indicated that SCO’s own internal audits of Linux source code showed no evidence of infringement. Further, the court found that SCO’s sale of broad SVRX licenses was a violation of its contract with Novell and ordered SCO to pay millions of dollars to the Linux company.
