The decision by U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball in Salt Lake City came in the long-running dispute between Novell of Provo and SCO.

In 2007, Kimball ruled Novell still owned pre-1995 copyrights to the Unix system that it sold that year to The Santa Cruz Operation. Lindon-based SCO bought the system in 2001 from Santa Cruz, believing it owned all of the copyrights to the system used by businesses to run their computer operations.

The 2007 decision led to a May trial on Novell's claim that it is owed $19.9 million on the pre-1995 copyrights. In Wednesday's ruling, the judge said SCO was entitled to enter into an agreement with Microsoft but owed royalties for the Sun deal.

A SCO company statement indicated the company will appeal Kimball's ruling from last year and said it continues to disagree with the premise of the May trial. At that proceeding, SCO contended the case should have gone to trial on its original claims that Novell was interfering with its ownership of Unix.

"We are pleased, however, that the court agreed that Novell is not entitled to anywhere near the more than $20 million dollars it was seeking," the SCO statement said.

Novell executives could not be reached for comment.

pmanson@sltrib.com