In the ongoing legal dispute between SCO Group and Novell over who really owns the Unix operating system, it appears Novell has finally had enough. eWEEK's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes that Novell is now attacking SCO in court with everything it has, in an effort to land a knock-out punch and put an end to all its legal shenanigans.

The Utah-based SCO Group and Novell have been been in litigation for months over which company actually owns the Unix System V copyright. Since it sued IBM for $1 billion (later increased to $5 billion) in March 2003, SCO Group has been the legal aggressor, taking several companies (most of which are former customers) into court to force payment of license fees on Unix code, which it contends belongs to its own storehouse of intellectual property.

On Friday, Novell filed its answer in the US District Court in Utah to SCO Group's claims that it, and not Novell, owned Unix's copyrights. Novell also filed counterclaims asking the court to force SCO to turn over its Unix licenses royalties to it and to attach SCO's assets to ensure that it can pay Novell. SCO had claimed that it, and not Novell, owned Unix's copyrights and that Novell's management knew this.

Novell replied that neither the APA (Asset Purchase Agreement) of Sept. 19, 1995, which transferred Unix and UnixWare to Santa Cruz Operations nor Amendment 2 to the APA gave SCO any copyrights to the Unix operating systems.

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