Open Source Journal on Ulitzer

There are no more obstacles standing in the way of the Linux-freighted trial over who the heck owns Unix.

The new judge, Ted Stewart, who's presiding over the SCO vs Novell case shot the pins out from under Novell's motion to rehear its claims to the tens of millions of dollars SCO got in royalties from Sun and Microsoft.

That issue was decided by the old judge, Dale Kimball, when he issued his summary judgment awarding ownership of the Unix copyrights to Novell. Unfortunately for Novell he calculated that its claims were only worth two million something plus interest, not the bigger sum it had its eye on.

And unfortunately for Novell its lawyers didn't bother to bring the subject up when SCO appealed the summary judgment and got it overturned. That lapse cost Novell any possibility of a do-over because the Tenth Circuit in Denver specifically let it stand when it limited the issues to be tried back in Utah.

Stewart also decided that SCO's claims in its slander of title against Novell over the copyrights can include SCO's lost sales and attorney's fees (alone a tidy packet), but not any drop in stock price. The trial is scheduled to start March 8.