U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball has refused, a second time, to dismiss SCO Group's claims for slander of title against Novell Inc.

Although SCO's case against Novell is separate from the case against IBM, and involves separate issues, the two cover much of the same ground.

Novell claimed that it still retained copyrights in certain pieces of the Unix operating system despite a 1995 agreement with a predecessor company to SCO that granted it the Unix operating system. The Unix operating system was a predecessor to the open-source Linux operating system.

SCO has sued large Linux users like DaimlerChrylser and AutoZone and, in a separate suit, has sued IBM over its distribution of Linux.

Judge Kimball has also recently ruled that SCO may not amend its complaint against IBM a third time and has set down that case for trial in February 2007.

Although much of the technical community is skeptical of SCO's claims to own copyright in portions of the Linux operating system, a ruling that upheld those claims could create significant problems for Linux users.