Novell to retain rights to Unix

Novell has confirmed in a statement that the company will not sell its open source Unix copyrights.

Following the news earlier this week that Novell is to be acquired by Attachmate, the company revealed that it will sell " certain intellectual property assets" to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium led by Microsoft.

The announcement prompted many observers to assume that this sale would include the rights to Unix, but Novell has confirmed that this is not the case.

"Novell will continue to own Novell's Unix copyrights following completion of the merger as a subsidiary of Attachmate," said John Dragoon, chief marketing officer at the firm.

Novell wrestled with SCO for six years in a legal case over the rights to Unix, and won the copyright only this year. However, as the company initially refused to clarify what intellectual property was being sold, speculation was rife.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, suggested that Microsoft could have used the rights to pressure companies using Unix and Linux into paying for a licence.

"It is going to be interesting to see how that plays out," he said. " Microsoft will aggressively seek out Novell licensees, and it's going to be an interesting time for Unix derivatives like Linux."

Novell was once the leading network software vendor with its Netware operating system, but gradually lost market share to Microsoft's Windows NT, the ancestor of Windows Server 2008.