Novell Asks Court to Separate SCOsource Money

clusterix writes "Groklaw has posted Novell's answer to SCO's slander of title complaint. In it, Novell produces many counter claims. The most eye-catching is the claim for the revenue from the SCOsource licenses bought by Microsoft and Sun and others. Novell states that they must be SVRX licenses which entitles them to 95% of revenue in royalties. They further request a trust to be constructed to hold the revenue until the case is decided. It is hard to see how the judge could deny such a request to protect the money which will likely bankrupt SCO."

Comments

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[MooseByte]

This is truly the meat in the Novell case. They must know that NewSCO itself is small potatoes. Novell also mentions they rejected NewSCO's invitation to join in the SCOSource initiative because it sounded like a scheme.

I think Novell is now hoping discovery will reveal evidence that NewSCO approached Sun and MS with the same scheme offer prior to launching their war against Linux.

If Novell can show Sun or MS acting with some fraudulent intent (shakedown, FUD to keep Linux down, etc.) then just imagine how big the pot of gold at the end of that litigation rainbow would be.

In the end Novell may be the one laughing all the way to the bank as a result of the NewSCO fiasco.

Good point. On the other hand...

[jd]

...a weekend in jail for the SCO board of directors could finish the company. The major shareholders are already fidgity and this could result in a major pull-out of any and all investment. Too much risk of bad publicity.

On the flip-side, SCO would make a great target for the Justice Department - too puny and insignificant to have any real impact on business, too flat-broke on their existing lawsuits to mount much of a defence, good publicity for their anti-corruption efforts (!) for every executive they convict and good for some of the big-name US companies being hastled by SCO.