SCO Sues Novell To Establish Its Ownership Of UnixSCO Sues Novell To Establish Its Ownership Of Unix

SCO Group defended its claims to Unix on Tuesday by filing suit against Novell for casting doubt over Unix's true ownership as it tries to eliminate any doubts that it actually owns the Unix copyrights--a must if it is to have any chance of proving that IBM illegally contributed licensed Unix code to the Linux kernel.

Both SCO Group and Novell have made very public claims that they own the rights to the operating system's source code. In December, Novell issued a statement that it "believes it owns the copyrights in Unix, and has applied for and received copyright registrations pertaining to Unix." Novell said Tuesday that it hadn't seen a copy of SCO's lawsuit and couldn't comment on the case.

SCO's lawsuit alleges a "bad-faith effort" on Novell's part to interfere with SCO's rights to Unix and UnixWare, according to a statement SCO issued Tuesday. More specific allegations assert that Novell has improperly filed copyright registrations with the U.S. Copyright Office for Unix technology covered by SCO's copyrights, has made false and misleading public claims that it owns the Unix and UnixWare copyrights, and has made false statements with the intent to cause customers and potential customers not to do business with SCO.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction that would require Novell to assign to SCO Group all Unix copyrights that it has recently registered. The injunction would also prevent Novell from representing any ownership interest in those copyrights and require Novell to stop making any references to its purported ownership of those copyrights.

"SCO has received many questions about Novell's actions from potential customers, investors, and the press," Mark Heise, a partner with Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, said in a statement. Boies, Schiller & Flexner represents SCO Group in its lawsuit against IBM. "We encourage the public and commercial Linux users to read the Asset Purchase Agreement from 1995 and Amendment 2 so they can see for themselves that SCO owns the copyrights to Unix and UnixWare." Novell disputes SCO Group's interpretation of the asset purchase agreement and Amendment 2.