SCO v. Novell was a United States lawsuit in which the The SCO Group (SCO) claimed ownership of the source code for the Unix operating system, including portions of Linux. SCO sought to have the court declare that SCO owned the rights to the Unix code, including the copyrights, and that Novell had committed slander of title by claiming those rights for itself.
The case hinged upon the interpretation of asset-transfer agreements between Novell and one of SCO's predecessor companies, the Santa Cruz Operation. Novell counter-sued, claiming that the asset-transfer agreements did not, in fact, transfer the intellectual property rights SCO sought. Novell further asked the Court to find that SCO had breached the agreements by signing Unix license agreements with Sun Microsystems and Microsoft without paying Novell the agreed percentage of those agreements.
Novell was found to be the owner of the Unix copyrights, and SCO was found to have breached the asset-transfer agreements.
Read more about SCO V. Novell: Background, The Lawsuit