Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell and Lindon, Utah-based SCO are involved in a long-running slander of title case to decide who owns the copyrights to the UnixWare operating system and Unix System V code base.

The case began after SCO declared in 2003 that Linux contained code that breaches its Unix copyrights. Novell sold the UnixWare and Unix System V business to Santa Cruz Operation Inc in 1995 before it sold it on to Caldera Inc, which later changed its name to SCO Group.

The terms of the Asset Purchase Agreement between Novell and Santa Cruz Operation were extremely complex and are subject to legal clarification, but did give Novell the right to 100% royalties from new or amended Unix System V licenses, minus a 5% administration fee.

Novell contends that SCO’s 2003 SCOsource intellectual property license agreements with Microsoft Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc fall under that heading, and has asked judge Dale Kimball for a summary judgment that it is entitled to 95% the $25.9m SCO made from them.

The claim to revenue from these agreements was first made in Novell’s August 2005 response to SCO’s slander of title case but Novell has had to wait until now to get its hands on copies of the agreements, according to its filings.

If Novell were to be successful it would be a massive blow for SCO, which has used the licensing revenue along with outside investment, to pay for its ongoing legal battles with IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and AutoZone.

With SCO’s revenue figures dropping and its legal costs ongoing, Novell is also concerned that SCO will have spent the money before it gets its hands on it and has also asked the court – should its request for partial summary judgment fail – for an injunction placing the money in a constructive trust.

SCO has previously rejected Novell’s claim that it is entitled to revenue from the Microsoft and Sun deals, maintaining that the royalty agreement with Novell only required SCO to pay out for then-existing SVRX licensees for their distribution of binary-code version of System V products.