SCO v. Novell appellate decision(Groklaw)

As reported by Groklaw: $$ from Sun deal affirmed as Novell's; rest remanded for jury trial

So SCO gets their trial, right? Yep, but the bankruptcy court has required the appointment of a trustee to run the show.

And that means that the old SCO management is out on their ear. And that means the trustee will evaluate the value of going to trial against Novell on the remanded issues or settling the case out of court. SCO owes Novell the money either way for the Sun license.

Of course, if SCO management were still in charge you can bet on a trial. With a new trustee being appointed to run the company and handle the assets in bankruptcy, I am not so sure. I think it is very likely that the trustee will not be able to justify spending more money just to sit through a trial.

Does SCO have any money left?

Certainly the new trustee is going to have to get the approval of the bankruptcy court to expend money it most likely does not have? And I doubt the court is going to do that. I doubt they would do so even if the case against Novell were a slam dunk. And it certainly is not that.

Speak about being a fly on the wall: Wait until the old SCO lawyers brief the new trustee about their case against Novell. That will be an interesting discussion. I say “will be” because the new trustee is pretty much bound to at least listen to that case. But, if this trustee has an litigation experience at all it is going to be a hard sell. And, the SCO lawyers may have been already paid for their time but any trial can be expensive. And the new trustee just does not have the cash laying around to pay for expensive litigation. And if they loose at trial, do they appeal again? No doubt the old SCO management certainly would have. But, the new trustee is unlikely to run a nuisance law suit. The trustee is going to want to see a very strong case to burn the last few dollars SCO has.

We are definitely in the end game here. Even though the appeal has remanded a few critical issues for trial.