The SCO Group was dealt a serious, potentially fatal blow today in its courtroom battle against Linux. The jury in the trial between SCO and Novell has issued a verdict affirming that Novell is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This verdict will make it difficult for SCO to continue pursuing its baseless assault on the open source operating system.
The SCO saga began in 2003 when the company claimed that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. SCO filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging that Big Blue misappropriated UNIX code and included it in the Linux kernel. Although SCO repeatedly claimed to have compelling evidence to support its accusations, the company has yet to provide proof in the seven years since. Internal SCO memos that came to light during the discovery process of SCO’s conflict with IBM revealed that SCO’s own internal code audits did not identify any evidence infringement.
