Jury unanimously decides in favor of Novell

The SCO Group faces yet another loss in its legal battle involving a number of Unix patents, according to a blog post on Novell's website. A District Corut of Utah jury on Tuesday issued a verdict confirming Novell's ownership of the Unix copyrights. SCO had attempted to convince the court that IBM and Novell were illegally profiting from SCO-owned Unix code built into their respective versions of Linux.

After SCO claimed to own the technology, Novell issued a public statement to the contrary. The latter company announced that it actually owned the copyrights, which were allegedly never transferred or sold to SCO. The following court battle centered around the ownership dispute, eventually leading a judge to rule in Novell's favor.

During the lengthy proceedings, SCO had fallen from profitability and in 2007 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A Tenth Circuit appeals court last year overturned the initial ruling, however, giving the company a second shot in the recent trial. The jury remained unconvinced, however, and unanimously agreed that SCO did not have enough evidence to support its ownership claims.

"Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on the intellectual property front," the company said in a statement. "This decision is good news for Novell, for Linux, and for the open source community."

Despite the recent ruling, SCO reportedly intends to continue its ongoing case against IBM, according to a Salt Lake Tribune report. "The copyright claims are gone, but we have other claims based on contracts," said former District Judge Edward Cahn, the trustee for SCO's bankruptcy. [via Groklaw]

By Electronista Staff

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