SCO Group, best known for suing IBM and claiming it deserved royalties from companies using the popular Linux operating system, said Thursday that a private investment firm has agreed to put up the money to take SCO out of bankruptcy court.

Stephen Norris Capital Partners and its partners from the Middle East, which SCO did not identify, have agreed to provide up to $100 million to reorganize SCO and take it private. As part of the plan, SNCP would take control of SCO.

Because of the investment, SCO is poised to emerge from bankruptcy court in the coming year. Jeff Hunsaker, president and chief operating officer of SCO, said the investment is in the best long-term interest of SCO, its subsidiaries, customers, shareholders, creditors, and employees.

"Not only will this deal position us to emerge from Chapter 11, but it also marks an exciting future for our business," Hunsaker said in a statement.

SNCP's business plan, according to SCO, includes launching new product lines and seeing the company through its legal problems. "We saw a tremendous investment opportunity in SCO and its vast range of products and services, including many new innovations ready or soon to be ready to be released into the marketplace," said Stephen Norris, managing partner for SNCP.

Among SCO's legal troubles is a Utah federal court order to compensate Novell for collecting royalties on Unix after it was found that Novell, and not SCO, holds the copyright to the venerable OS. A trial to determine the size of the compensation is set to begin April 29 in Salt Lake City. SCO could end up owing Novell more than $25 million.

SCO's claim to the Unix copyright was the basis for its argument that it deserved royalties for the use of open source Linux. The company claimed that Unix code was used in Linux, but once the Utah federal court ruled SCO did not own the copyright, its claims became moot. Among the companies SCO sued in trying to collect royalties was IBM.