SCO gets owned.

Finally, SCO, the patent-troll that’s been suing *nix companies and users for
alleged copyright infringement, gets a taste of its own medicine. A federal
judge ruled Friday that not only does SCO not own the copyright to
Unix, but Novell does, and furthermore, SCO must return to Novell 95%
of the royalties it has collected from licensing Unix.

According to Judge Kimball’s ruling, Microsoft paid SCO
approximately $16 million for license rights and Sun paid approximately $10
million. SCO neglected to turn over the licensing fees to Novell, which “gave
SCO its first profitable year in history,” Kimball notes. “As a matter of law,
the court concludes that SCO breached its fiduciary duties to Novell by failing
to account for and remit the appropriate SVRX Royalty payments to Novell for the
SVRX portions of the 2003 Sun and Microsoft Agreements,” says Kimball. “Because
of the decrease in SCO’s revenues and assets, Novell fears that it will be
unable to collect on its claim for royalties.”