In a tightly-phrased statement, Novell Inc [NOVL] rejected SCO’s claim that its planned $210 million acquisition of SuSE would violate a non-competition agreement signed in 1995 with the company.

SCO maintains it may take legal action against Novell if it proceeds with the acquisition and offers Linux products.

Novell’s statement denied the existence of non-competition provisions in contracts between it and Novell and added Novell’s acquisition of SuSE would proceed as planned.

SCO claims the language in the agreement to purchase Unix from Novell, in amendments to that agreement, and in the subsequent agreement licensing Unix back to Novell from SCO prevents Novell from entering a market that competes with SCO’s Unix products.

Legal action against Novell is one of a list of possible options, including negotiations and face-to-face meetings.

Meanwhile, it seems SCO’s attempts to sign-up Fortune 1000 companies running Linux to its UnixWare runtime license are not proceeding smoothly.

A deadline to charge the full $1,399 license has been pushed back a second time by SCO, giving customers until at least the end of December to pay a $699 introductory fee that it had planned to end on October 15.

And legal action is also being prepared by SCO against a Linux user, despite the firm last month appearing to back down from its threats to invoice and litigate against businesses running Linux.

It’s the latest twist in a complex story, during which SCO has vied between threatening mass invoicing and taking legal action.

In August SCO was preparing to invoice businesses running or developing with Linux, asking them to pay $699 per server running Linux, and $199 per client. SCO is in the process of identifying a Linux user that it could take to court to speed up the legal process.

In October, the company appeared to back down on its threat to invoice businesses, claiming the success of its plan to license UnixWare to Linux users and denying that the company was using the threat of invoicing to put the screws on Linux users.

Now, however, the threat appears to be very real with SCO intent on identifying a user that it alleges has not paid license fees and is using proprietary and copyrighted material within the next 90 days.

SCO said it would offer identified Linux users the chance to take up a UnixWare license, but if they chose to have a court hearing, the company would move towards litigation.

This article was based on material originally published by ComputerWire.