Earlier this week, a Federal Appeals Court ruled that the U.S. District Court had overstepped its grounds in ruling that SCO had never bought Novell’s Unix IP (intellectual property) rights. Without those IP rights, SCO didn’t have a leg to stand on in all its other anti-Linux lawsuits against IBM, Novell, Red Hat, et. al. So, now SCO can start again right? Ah wrong. It’s much more complicated than that. Here’s what really going to happen next.
First, SCO doesn’t own Unix’s IP. The Court rules that Judge Dale Kimball overstepped his authority, to make that decision and that the question of who owns Unix should be decided by a jury, but that’s not the same thing as deciding who owns Unix’s IP. That question is up in the air.
According to SCO CEO Darl McBride this decision enables the company to continue its Novell and IBM lawsuits. Not really. You see McBride no longer has any control of SCO. The day after the Federal Appeals Court made its decision, the Bankruptcy Court put SCO under the control of a Chapter 11 Trustee, Edward N. Cahn. Cahn, a former judge who has no connection with SCO’s management, is now the man in charge, and his priorities have nothing to do with SCO’s manic self-destructive drive to spend every dollar it can beg, borrow and steal on anti-Linux lawsuits.
So, the real question isn’t what McBride wants to do. What he wants doesn’t matter any more.