Intellectual property Toolkit

SCO suffers another loss

Graeme Wearden ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 02 Mar 2007 16:53 GMT

SCO, the Unix vendor embroiled in a long-running legal battle over Linux, has recorded another financial loss.

In the three months to 31 January 2007 SCO brought in revenues of $6.05m (£3.09m), down from $7.3m for the same quarter a year before. The company made a loss of just over $1m during the quarter.

Income from product sales fell to $4.855m in the quarter, down from $6m a year earlier. SCO's controversial SCOsource Linux licences — which it says protects users from being sued for using Linux — also proved less popular. It brought in $23,000 in the quarter, compared to $30,000 a year ago and $678,000 in the second quarter of 2004.

Earlier this year, SCO announced that it lost $16.6m in 2006, compared to a loss of $10.7m in 2005.

SCO is suing IBM, claiming that the software giant included SCO's Unix intellectual property within Linux. IBM has denied this claim, and is countersuing SCO. Novell and SCO are also suing each other. Novell claims that it retained the copyright to Unix when it transferred Unix and UnixWare to Santa Cruz Operation (now SCO) in 1995. SCO accuses Novell of slander over this claim.

Novell recently claimed that SCO was close to bankruptcy. But on Thursday, SCO chief executive Darl McBride gave an upbeat view of his company's future.

"Now it's time to get it on. Let's get in there and have the truth out on the table and see where it goes," McBride said, according to Internetnews.com. "We like our chances."