Unix Operating System Firm Bought By Las Vegas Company

A company out of Las Vegas, Nevada has just bought the trademarks and service contracts for Unix, a computer operating system that is used by large corporations. Unix has also been the center of a large legal battle for the past few years.

The company, known as UnXis, finalized the purchase from a bankrupt Utah company on Monday according to CEO of UnXis Richard Bolandz. It will retain all 32,000 contracts with corporate customers who use this particular computer program to operate their servers.

Unix was previously owned by The SCO Group based out of Lindon, Utah. The SCO Group filed for bankruptcy back in 2007 after years of litigation with IBM and Novell due to the use of Unix code in the open source Linux operating system.

A federal jury in Salt Lake City ruled in favor of Novell back in March 2010, however, the ruling has been appealed to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. The lawsuits will remain with The SCO Group; this includes any future awards. UnXis is indemnified from all legal costs.

A spokesman from Novell failed to immediately reply to calls from The Associated Press, however, a spokeswoman for The SCO Group referred the Associated Press to a joint website that was set up by UnXis and SCO for questions.

On the site Bolandz said that the focus of UnXis will be on developing Unix software in order to meet their customers’ online needs. This includes moving services to remote locations that do not necessarily require onsite servers.

According to Bolandz, “We are rebuilding our technology leadership with innovations to better leverage existing applications as well as a whole new generation of hardware, software and trends of the cloud whilst understanding What Is A Cloud Application?”

Novell purchased Unix from AT&T Corporation way back in 1992 and SCO has said that its predecessor, Santa Cruz Operations Incorporated, paid Novell 6.1 million shares of SCO stock that was valued at over $100 million for the Unix rights in 1995.

The SCO Group filed a slander-of-title lawsuit back in 2004 seeking damages in excess of $215 million, asserting Novell hurt their business as well as their reputation. The SCO Group claimed that Novell sold copyrights when it allowed SCO to take over the business of servicing Unix technology back in 1995.

Novell has continually maintained that they sold the servicing rights, not the copyrights.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek – Las Vegas company buys Unix operating system firm

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