The SCO Group, Linux, and Life After SCO's Setback Against Novell

Abstract

Recently, the US District Court for the District of Utah issued a 102 page opinion in SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc., dealing with open source software copyright licensing agreement practices. The authors of this article, Joseph M. Potenza and Steve Chang of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd., provide the history of the dispute, analyze the court's decision, and offer opinions on the short- and long-term implications of the decision for the parties involved and others similarly situated. They also point out that, although the court ruled on summary judgment that Novell and not SCO owns the copyrights to Unix, the computer operating system at issue, other claims between the parties remain open. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]