SCO versus Novell was a lengthy lawsuit battle that lasted nearly 6 years. Novell, who owned the rights to the UNIX source code, entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement (APA) with the Santa Cruz Operation, which later became the SCO Group (SCO) after Caldera Systems acquired it. SCO wanted Linux users to start paying them for software license fees claiming that Linux had code that SCO owned. SCO also claimed that they were the owners of UNIX.
SCO (who was known to file lawsuits against many companies including HP and IBM) filed a Slander of Title lawsuit against Novell requesting that all UNIX copyrights be given to SCO and also forcing Novell to give up all claims to the UNIX code. The case was eventually dismissed and Novell filed a counter-suit against SCO claiming Slander of Title and Breach of Contract among other things. This legal battle lasted for years and went through many different court systems.
For the most part, the lawsuit battle seems to be over. In June of 2010, Judge and jury ruled in favor of Novell on all issues and was thereby closing the case. They ruled that Novell did indeed own the copyrights to UNIX. Although SCO appealed the court judgment to the US Court of Appeals in July of 2010, it seems that this case is indeed finally over. This was a major victory for the entire open source community, including Linux.
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