Novell's trial is set to resume in April when its state of affairs w.r.t. SCO will be discussed.

A long-delayed federal trial that will, hopefully, wrap up the remainder of a four-year battle between Novell and the bankrupt SCO group over intellectual property rights to Unix will finally proceed. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball issued an order for a four-day trial to start April 29.

Friday's order follows a November ruling by a bankruptcy judge in Delaware who decided to allow the federal trial in Utah to proceed to determine if SCO had the authority to collect Unix license fees and what portion of the fees it collected from Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems and other Linux customers should be returned to Novell. Novell said those fees could potentially amount to up to $40 million.

Here is another report on the very same issue.

A federal judge has set an April trial date to determine how much, if anything, The SCO Group owes Novell Inc. for unauthorized licensing of computer software -- a potential bill of around $35 million.

Federal Judge Dale Kimball scheduled the four-day bench trial to begin April 29 in Salt Lake City.

And another:

Novell will head to court this April to find out what it is owed, if anything, by SCO, which had been trying to earn royalties from Unix code it did not own.

The following adds the observation made in various sites including Groklaw. SCO appears to be spending the money which it owes Novell and others.

Novell has expressed concerns that SCO is attempting to sell off assets that could be used to help satisfy its possible financial obligations to Novell.

There are still quite a few filings on this matter and every scrap of paper appears to get documented in Groklaw at the moment.

In other legal news, the WordPerfect trial which we mentioned yesterday is getting a little more attention. The Bloomberg article has been updated and here is another short mention from the Boston Globe.

Novell suit vs. Microsoft cites WordPerfect share WordPerfect, a once-popular software program, is making something of a comeback - this time as Exhibit A in Novell Inc.'s antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp. The suit is a byproduct of the US government's landmark case against Microsoft that was settled more than six years ago after the world's biggest software maker was declared an illegal monopolist. Novell briefly owned WordPerfect in the 1990s and says Microsoft's anticompetitive tactics undermined the product. WordPerfect's share of the word-processing market fell to less than 10 percent in 1996 from almost 50 percent in 1990. Microsoft asked the US Supreme Court last week to quash the suit. (Bloomberg)

Things have been relatively quiet on SCO's side of the fence. The company hasn't the capacity to fight anymore, but it hasn't much to lose either. ⬆