A federal judge this week dismissed Novell's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the SCO Group that seeks to establish SCO's ownership of Unix copyrights, a linchpin to its legal case against IBM and others involving Linux. In a ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball for the district of Utah ruled that assessing Novell's claims requires interpretation of information beyond two contracts that governed Novell's sale of some Unix assets to the SCO Group's predecessor.
"Even though Novell argues that it has evidence to support its alleged good-faith basis for claiming ownership of the Unix copyrights, the proper place to introduce that evidence and argue its significance is not on a motion dismiss," Kimball said in the ruling. The question of ownership of Unix copyrights affects other SCO lawsuits involving IBM, Red Hat, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler.