SCO Group Faces Nasdaq Delisting

The news is going from bad to worse for The SCO Group and its investors.

In August, a judge ruled that the company does not own the copyrights to Unix -- the operating system around which its business is built. Last week, SCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now, it's facing a delisting action by Nasdaq stock market officials.

In a regulatory filing Wednesday, SCO said it's been notified by the Nasdaq that its shares will be delisted on Sept. 27. SCO said it plans to request a hearing with Nasdaq officials to ask for a stay of the delisting order.

SCO shares have lost most of their value since the company made its Chapter 11 filing on Sept. 14. The shares were trading at $0.19 in early market activity Thursday.

SCO sued Novell in 2004 over the copyrights to Unix. In August, Utah federal court judge Dale Kimball ruled that the copyrights belong to Novell -- effectively gutting the case and a number of related actions that SCO has taken against other rivals, including IBM.

SCO claims that the open source operating system Linux is a Unix derivative and that it therefore should receive payment from Linux users and distributors. Kimball's determination that SCO does not own the Unix copyrights has made the claims moot.

Kimball also ruled that SCO must remit to Novell a portion of the license fees that it has collected from selling Unix. That could amount to as much as $30 million, SCO said in a regulatory filing Tuesday, a figure that exceeds SCO's total assets. In that filing, SCO conceded that "there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."

A trial to determine the amount SCO owes to Novell has been delayed pending SCO's bankruptcy hearings.