The legal claims SCO made against Linux are back.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals today threw out the Utah district court's August 2007 summary judgment awarding ownership of Unix and UnixWare copyrights to Novell.

The appeals court also overturned Novell's waiver of SCO's termination of IBM's right to distribute AIX and Novell's order telling SCO to abandon its breach-of-contract and copyright suit against IBM and Sequent.

The 54-page decision, which did uphold Novell's right to $2.5 million in Sun royalties from SCO, puts SCO Source, the battered company's tax on Linux, back in play.

SCO can now get the jury trial that it has always said it wanted. Moot courts reportedly suggest it could win.

SCO's immediate problem is that it's out of money and expects a trustee to arrive on its doorstep any minute now to determine whether to proceed with its litigation and with the sale of all but its legal claims to an outfit called Unxis.

The decision today is expected to breathe new life into its litigation. SCO's legal bills are paid through the trial leaving it to pick up only the expenses.

Before this is over SCO may even get some of the IP claims back that Magistrate Brook Wells threw out when she was sifting through evidence for Judge Kimball, the guy whose summary judgment was just overturned.