Appeals Court Resurrects SCO Lawsuit

Not too long ago, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw explained he had found the perfect husband for Lara Croft: Jason Voorhees. They both have way too many sequels all following a default plot, they both murder a lot and spend a lot of time underground, but most of all: none of them will ever just die. In that light, I suggest another husband for Miss Croft: Darl McBride. Instant update: Darl McBride responds. See inside.

Yes, you thought it was all in the past, that the lawsuit was over, and that SCO was a thing of the past we would no longer be able to point to and laugh at. Well, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday that SCO has a right to a jury trial on its claims that it owns the UNIX operating system, which could, potentially, lead to renewed legal fuss about Linux.

This ruling reverses an earlier decision by a lower court in 2007 which said that SCO was not the owner of the UNIX operating system, ending a long drawn-out legal battle between SCO and various other companies.

Without taking any sides, the court of the current decision states that the copyright case is simply too close to call. “We take no position on which party ultimately owns the Unix copyrights or which copyrights were required for Santa Cruz to exercise its rights under the agreement,” the court wrote, “Such matters are for the finder of fact on remand.”

So now we’re going to have a jury decide over these matters. Pardon my ignorance about the intricacies of jury-based trials (we don’t have that in The Netherlands), but does this mean a bunch of random people, possibly without any expertise or knowledge about these matters, get to decide who owns the copyrights?

Anyway, Darl McBride is happy with the decision, obviously, and he states that SCO may pick up its claims against the various Linux companies again. “Today is not the end of the war but it certainly is a key battle that we’ve won,” said McBride, “Now it’s time to move on to the next series of battles with our victory in hand.”

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