He also ruled that Novell did indeed have right, and did, waive any purported violations of license against IBM.   In essence he dismissed SCOX's objections to this as groundless.

That in and of itself destroys virtually all of SCOX's case against IBM.   And the lack of ownership of the copyrights will clear the way for the Red Hat case to proceed with few obstacles for RH to get a declaratory judgment.  

He also ruled that SCOX's Sun and Microsoft licenses are at least in part SysV licenses and that SCOX's refusal to get Novell's agreement before proceeding, and lack of payment as per the APA for that portion constitutes "conversion", the civil equivalent of theft.   He did not grant an immediate "constructive trust" to sequester monies to pay Novell, but asserted that the portion of the Sun and MS payments due to  Novell should be decided by jury.

There are contractual plaints SCOX has against Novell which still stand, but their scope has been dramatically reduced.  Novell's case for slander of title against SCOX (almost the reverse of what SCOX initially filed against Novell) is dramatically strengthened.

There is at least one thing I dislike, which I also find amusing.  Judge Kimball ruled that the Caldera buyout of Santa Cruz was NOT a "change of control" as outlined in the contracts for purposes of limiting rights of mutual competition.  Had SCOX limited its claim to now having need of the contracts and concentrated on that they might have won something.  Actually they have argued that in the alternative, but Kimball made much of the APA's purpose being to give Santa Cruz rights to develop and market its own derivative of UNIX - enough so that I think he is forclosing any such avenue for SCOX to persue at this date.

The jury trial for SCOX v Novell is scheduled for September 17th, a little over a month away.

I don't expect it to happen at all.

I expect SCOX to file an appeal to these rulings almost immediately ... and almost immediately thereafter file for reorganization bankruptcy.  Given that Kimball has found SCOX liable for conversion, Novell will ask the bankruptcy to be converted to liqidation.  But SCOX will ask the bankruptcy court to delay conversion to liquidation until all appeals are exhausted.