Novell has filed its Reply [PDF] to SCO's Response Concerning Novell's Notice of Related Proceeding, which asks the new judge now assigned to the Novell case in Utah, Hon. Ted Stewart, to consolidate the two cases, SCO v. IBM and SCO v. Novell, or in the alternative to at least assign the same judge to both, which SCO opposes.

"When Judge Kimball ruled against SCO in favor of Novell and said that Novell owned Unix's IP (intellectual property), that was the end of SCO. So now, SCO's legal cases are dead -- but what about its friends and partners? "

An anonymous poster told us about a recent order from Judge Kimball in another case, unrelated to SCO, but one that references his own decision in SCO v. Novell. So I took a look at the order, and it answers a question I've had, namely, what if, at trial, a judge were to realize he'd made a mistake on an earlier ruling on summary judgment motions? Is it too late to fix it?

In the aftermath of federal district judge Dale A. Kimball's recent ruling, which determined that Novell, not SCO, is the rightful owner of the UNIX copyrights, the once-mighty proprietary UNIX vendor is on the verge of annihilation.

Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here it is as text. Here is what matters most:

[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.

A US federal appeals court overturned a judge’s ruling that granted Novell the copyright of the Unix computer OS yesterday. A panel of three judges of the 10th US circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge in the August 2007 case wrongfully handed the copyright to Novell. As a result the panel has ordered a “remand for trial” to establish ownership.

"Now, as a byproduct of SCO v. Novell -- the case over who really owns Unix's IP (intellectual property) -- and thanks to Groklaw, we now know what Sun was buying from SCO (PDF download). In part, it does seem to be an attack on Linux; but that wasn't all."

A U.S. judge reversed on Monday a jury's ruling that Microsoft Corp. had infringed patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and threw out a record $1.5 billion verdict against the world's largest software maker.

Judge Dale Kimball’s 102 page opinion Friday in the SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc. (available here), has been widely reported on. It is a surprisingly easy read: Bravo Judge Kimball (and clerks). My comments are limited to the copyright aspects of the case.