SCO to pay lawyers millions for more legal power

“Unix developer The SCO Group Inc. said Tuesday that it is extending an agreement with its lawyers to defend itself against new copyright issues in a move that will take a multimillion dollar bite out of its fourth-quarter 2003 financial results to go toward paying legal fees. With the boost in legal resources, SCO plans to, among other things, sue within the next 90 days an end-user company over its use of the Linux operating system, which SCO alleges infringes on its Unix intellectual property. ‘Clearly, large customers that are using a lot of Linux machines inside their environment would be the starting point’ of SCO’s beefed-up legal initiative, said SCO’s President and Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride during a conference call Tuesday. The company, which is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with IBM Corp. over a Unix license, said it plans to take a charge of US$8,956,000 in its fourth quarter ended Oct. 31, 2003, to pay Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP and other law firms representing SCO. One million dollars will be paid in cash while the remaining amount will go toward the issuance of 400,000 shares of common stock, the company said.”

Why doesn’t SCO just pick up its ball and go home?