Oh the irony. Today, August 24th, a Federal Appeals Court ruled that while the walking dead SCO still owes Novell big bucks for selling Unix to Sun and Microsoft, the District Court overstepped its grounds in ruling that SCO had never bought Unix’s IP (intellectual property) rights in the first place. What’s funny about this is that it’s only after SCO is dead for all practical purposes, that it finally manage to win one.
This does not mean, as the few brain-dead SCO supporters would have it, that SCO owns Unix’s IP. It means that SCO might own them and they can take the matter to a jury trial. As the ruling itself states (PDF Link) “We recognize that Novell has powerful arguments to support its version of the transaction, and that, as the district court suggested, there may be reasons to discount the credibility, relevance, or persuasiveness of the extrinsic evidence that SCO presents.” But, since “the evidence presented on a dispositive issue is subject to conflicting, reasonable interpretations, summary judgment is improper. So, “We think SCO has presented sufficient evidence to create a triable fact as to whether at least some UNIX copyrights were required for it to exercise its rights under the agreement.”
So does, this mean that as CEO Darl McBride said in The Salt Lake Tribune that this is a “‘huge validation for SCO’ that will enable it to continue its lawsuit against IBM and a related suit against Novell.”?
Uh. No, not really.