Dreaded SCO Group is back, with money to go after Linux users

sco.jpg Amazingly, the obscure Utah-based SCO Group that sparked outrage four years ago when it began suing Linux users, is back.

The company, which sued Novell, IBM and other Linux users for infringing on its ownership rights of the Unix Operating System, has raised $100 million from private equity investors (see its announcement), which it will use to exit bankruptcy.
SCO filed for bankruptcy protection in September, after a court ruled in August that Novell controlled the rights to the Unix Operating system — which SCO had hoped to sell to pay off creditors.
The funding came from the private equity firm Stephen Norris Capital Partners and partners in the Middle East. The firm and its partners will have a controlling interest in SCO.

This gives SCO resources to continue its court battle with Novell over royalties from the Unix server operating system.

Silicon Valley lawyer Mark Radcliffe of DLA Piper calls the investment “puzzling,” explaining why in his post here, and said that in his 25 years of practice, the SCO case represented “one of three most dramatic failures” of an intellectual property strategy. The bizarre case continues.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Jane Parks-McKay
    Matt: Dean told me about your enterprise there, way to go, gives all of us journalistic types hope that there is hope after and alongside newspapers. I enjoyed the article done on SCO, I was wondering what happened to it.

    Congrats!

    Jane Parks-McKay