The SCO Group this week stepped up its efforts to gain a court deposition from secretive blogger Pamela Jones, whose Groklaw.com Web site has become a widely read forum for bashing the company's lawsuits against competitors.

In a document filed Monday, SCO asked the U.S. District Court in Utah to allow any testimony it does manage to extract from Jones for a case against Novell to be used in a similar case it has filed against IBM. "Obviously aware of SCO's designs to depose her, Ms. Jones has neither accepted service of the subpoena nor agreed to appear for deposition," SCO notes in the court papers, filed Monday.

SCO said it previously issued a subpoena in federal court in Connecticut -- where it suspects Jones lives -- compelling her to provide testimony by Feb. 21. In a posting on Groklaw, Jones said she never received the subpoena. She also said she was on a self-imposed "health break" from the Web site during the period when SCO tried to serve her.

SCO has long been trying to ascertain more about Jones' identity in an effort to confirm its suspicions that her efforts are underwritten by some of the company's software industry rivals. In Monday's filing, the company cites numerous industry reports, including a story that appeared on InformationWeek.com, that raised questions about Groklaw's ties.

SCO's lawsuits against Novell and IBM center around its claims that parts of the open source Linux operating system distributed by those companies contain code belonging to SCO. IBM and Novell have repeatedly denied those assertions, as well as SCO's insistence that they are in some way connected to Jones or Groklaw.

To date, the Utah Court has for the most part taken a dim view of SCO's complaints against IBM and Novell. Last year, for instance, Utah District Court Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells in late June dismissed 182 of the 201 claims IBM sought to have thrown out of the case.

If SCO is to serve a subpoena on Jones, it had better hurry. By mutual agreement with Novell, SCO has until May 31 to take a deposition from Jones, SCO said

In commenting on the latest filing, Jones wrote on Groklaw: "And so the stupidest lawsuit in the history of the world just got stupider. And a whole lot meaner."