However, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball did grant SCO additional time to respond to Novell's motion for dismissal, giving the Lindon software company until Dec. 11 to file arguments that its "slander of title" complaint be saved.

SCO sued Novell in 2004 after the Waltham, Mass.-based company claimed that it retained rights to Unix, an operating system SCO claims it bought from Novell outright in 1995.

Ownership of Unix also is key to SCO's separate $5 billion suit against IBM. That complaint alleges Big Blue illegally released portions of Unix code into versions of the freely distributed Linux operating system.

SCO had asked Kimball, who is hearing both cases, to postpone the Novell suit until after the SCO-IBM trial concludes. Those proceedings had been scheduled for Feb. 26, but Kimball vacated the date on Tuesday, leaving the trial schedule temporarily open.

Kimball did set oral arguments on Novell's motion for Jan. 23 and rescheduled trial for that case to Sept. 17 next year.

IBM, too, has filed for dismissal, contending that despite three years of litigation the Utah company has failed to provide evidence to support its claims.