Novell was foiled in its attempt this week to persuade the bankruptcy judge in Delaware, who’s holding SCO life in his hands, to deny SCO another extension in filing a formal plan of reorganization.

If the judge had agreed with Novell – which he didn’t – that would have ended what they call in bankruptcy circles the “exclusivity period” when only the debtor – in this case SCO – can file a reorganization plan.

It’s only that exclusivity proviso that preventing Novell and IBM from filing a SCO reorganization plan of their own. (Quick flashback to one partition of Poland or another – or any map Churchill ever pored over with his brandy glass in hand.)

SCO asked for the extension because it’s waiting on Utah district court judge Dale Kimball to rule on whether or not SCO owes Novell any money and if so how much. It’s kinda hard, SCO says, to write a reorganization plan without knowing your liabilities.

Judge Kimball had promised on May 2 to be quick about it but his ruling has yet to materialize, which is why Delaware gave SCO until August 11 without the hard stop Novell would have liked. Delaware built in more time for Utah to dither.

Optimists wonder whether Kimball might finally sit down and read the 120-page summary judgment his clerk wrote last year that turned SCO’s slander-of-title suit against Novell inside out by awarding Novell ownership of the Unix copyrights.

Since the summary judgment is supposedly sure to be overturned if SCO can get to an appeals court, Kimball could reverse himself and correct the first-year law school errors of the summary judgment.

Novell dropped the amount of their $40 million claim against SCO before the April hearing and the worst Kimball could do is maybe say SCO owes Novell $25 million and some ongoing royalties.