Federal district judge Dale A. Kimball has handed down the final judgment in the SCO case. The decision dismisses SCO's latest claims, grants declaratory relief to Novell, and sustains the court's previous judgment that SCO owes Novell over $2.54 million (plus interest) for unjust enrichment.

SCO's protracted legal shenanigan has been running for roughly five years now. The company originally claimed that it owned the UNIX SVRX copyrights and that incontrovertible evidence had been uncovered that the open source Linux kernel was written using a significant amount of code that was misappropriated from SVRX. In reality, SCO's own internal audits of Linux source code turned up no evidence of copyright infringement; meanwhile, Novell has turned out to be the rightful owner of the SVRX copyrights.

SCO managed to use its false claims to extract licensing revenue out of companies that were apparently uninterested in contesting its claims. Novell took SCO's claims to court and eventually triumphed, which pushed SCO off of the precipice and into bankruptcy.

Judge Kimball determined that SCO was subject to a contract with Novell, which it violated by lifting SVRX confidentiality provisions in a licensing agreement with Sun. This move exceeded the authority granted to SCO under the terms of a 1994 asset purchase agreement that enabled SCO to sell limited SVRX licenses to third parties on behalf of Novell. Judge Kimball also determined that SCO breached its fiduciary duty by neglecting to remit the requisite portion of the licensing revenue to Novell.

In addition to the $2,547,817 that SCO was originally ordered to pay to Novell in a previous judgment, SCO will also have to pay $918,122 in prejudgment interest and $489 per day from August 29 until November 20. SCO is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings and does not presently have the resources to pay the amount in full. A constructive trust has been established with $625,000 of SCO's remaining resources.

SCO could still theoretically appeal, but it seems unlikely that the dying UNIX vendor can afford to do so. Several of SCO's attempts to reorganize have failed and a private equity firm that was in negotiations to resurrect SCO has backed away from the deal. SCO's own management has substantial doubts about the company's future.

Despite all the legal decisions to the contrary, SCO's number one man, Darl McBride, has continued to espouse his belief that Linux was built by stealing from UNIX. Regardless of his opinion, SCO's long battle is finally reaching a very undignified end.

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