The long-running court case to decide which company owns the Unix copyrights will continue while SCO’s copyright infringement claims against Novell’s SUSE Linux business are referred to the International Court of Arbitration, following an order from District Judge Dale Kimball.

In April Novell asked the Judge to delay the entire case while copyright matters related to the 2002 UnitedLinux agreement between the then SUSE Linux AG and Caldera International Inc (as well as Turbolinux Inc and Conectiva SA) were referred to arbitration.

Novell’s motion has been denied in part as the Judge ruled that the court should continue to hear matters related to the sale of Novell’s UnixWare business and Unix System V code base to Santa Cruz Operation in 1993 and the sale of that business to Caldera, which later changed its name to SCO Group.

Although Novell attempts to argue that there is an overlap between its defense of the claims relating to SUSE and SCO’s claims relating to [Unix], they are distinct in time and based on entirely separate agreements, wrote the Judge in his order.

Both require an underlying finding that SCO did, in fact, have ownership of the copyrights. But they appear to be factually and legally distinct.

SCO brought its slander of title case against Novell in January 2004 after the Waltham, Massachusetts-based company claimed that it was the rightful owner of the Unix copyrights and stepped in to absolve IBM Corp of any wrongdoing in SCO’s breach of contract case against Big Blue.

The copyright claims related to Linux were not introduced until January this year when SCO maintained that the SUSE Linux business Novell acquired in late 2003 was in breach of copyright for distributing the code SCO claims IBM contributed to Linux in breach of its contracts.

Novell responded by stating that, according to the terms UnitedLinux agreement, SCO was precluded from asserting copyright infringement claims against SUSE Linux. Based on the terms of UnitedLinux, it also submitted a Request for Arbitration to the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris.

The relationships between SCO, IBM and Novell are complex, and by delaying hearings related to Linux while the Court of Arbitration proceeds, Judge Kimball should be able to focus his attention on the thorny issue of who owns the rights to Unix.

Judge Kimball noted, however, that if the arbitration is still ongoing before trial he would look again at the issue of whether to delay the entire case, and that should the arbitration be completed before the slander of title case goes to trial, the court will take the result of the arbitration into account.

The case is not expected to go to trial until June 2007.