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Novell Piling On SCO
from the not-looking-good dept
As the various lawsuits SCO filed continue to fall apart just as almost everyone expected they would from day one, it looks like those that SCO has gone after are piling on the lawsuits in return. One of the early flareups concerned whether or not SCO really owned all the intellectual property they claimed to. Novell made a claim in 2003 that they actually still owned the copyrights for Unix. That got a lot of attention, but soon afterwards SCO found an amendment to the agreement that suggested the copyrights had been transferred over and the whole issue seemed to go away. Well, now it looks like it's back. Novell has filed a countersuit against SCO saying that SCO begged them to transfer the copyrights over just before they went on their legal joyride. So, based on that, Novell is claiming that, if anything, it's entitled to 95% of SCO's licensing revenue. What's not clear is how the whole situation with the supposed amendment plays into this. When SCO first came up with it, Novell more or less admitted that it was legit -- but that they had misplaced their own copy of the agreement. So, it's not clear why they're coming back now and bringing up this issue again -- unless they somehow believe that amendment is not valid, or some other situation has changed the standing of that amendment. Or maybe they're just looking to cause more trouble and kick SCO while it's down.
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When in doubt about anything related to litigation SCO's involved in, check Groklaw.
The purported Amendment 2 to the Asset Purchase Agreement does not transfer any copyrights to the original SCO (now part of sun as of recently). It made assurances that it would at some future date transfer them if they were required to "exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies." The former Caldera (now calling themselves The SCO Group with stock ticker SCOX) has asked for that transfer to take place and Novell has refused, noting that they're not required to exercise the rights with respect to the APA.
You're quite correct that Novell has said that while they don't seem to have a copy of this amendment to the asset purchase agreement, it does appear to have valid Novell signatures on it.
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Also, the original APA stipulates that the original SCO would pay Novell 100% of all SVR5 related licensing revenue and then Novell would return a 5% 'handling' fee.
This is not at all related to the Amendment 2, but is spelled out very clearly in the original APA -- regardless of who owns the copyrights
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as Jeff says, SCO has ALWAYS been required to, & in the past did, pay the licensing fee to Novell & received 5% back as an agent fee. In the case of two recent, high profile & $$ amounts (approx $25 million w/ MS & Sun), SCO has refused to give Novell the money and refused to allow Novell to review the licenses, both of which SCO is required, by contract, to do.
It is getting very interesting..
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