As its chief executive during the 1980s and early 1990s, Ray Noorda had taken the software company Novell to a dominant position in the network operating system space[1] and in so doing became a personal computer industry pioneer.

[8] These companies included Coresoft Technologies, KeyLabs Inc., Vinca Corp., and Helius Inc.[8] Another early Canopy Group investment was Nombas,[13] which unlike the others was located in the eastern portion of the country.

[8] In addition the ups and downs of Novell's fortunes led to executives or projects departing it and new companies being formed, some of which Canopy funded.

[9] Subsequently the Canopy Group shifted its Novell-specific focus to one that was more geared towards open source software and network infrastructure projects in general.

[14] In June 1995, Noorda announced the creation of Canopy Technologies, which would provide marketing, distribution, and management services to small software companies.

[21] In particular reaction from the free and open source software community was intense and the SCO Group soon became, as Businessweek headlined, "The Most Hated Company In Tech".

[23][2][11] For instance, in July 2003, Fortune magazine emphasized the role that the Canopy Group was playing and called Yarro the "mastermind" behind the SCO v. IBM action.

[18] Columnist Frank Hayes of Computerworld examined how the SCO Group was acquiring Vultus Inc., another company controlled by Canopy, and concluded that Canopy was playing "a shell game ... to move its companies around" in order to exploit and cash in on the SCO Group's rising stock price.

[10] Yarro and the other executives sued in the Utah District Courts for $100 million for wrongful termination, claiming that Noorda had been unduly influenced, and Canopy countersued the three men.

[21] On 8 March 2005, the day before initial hearings were scheduled to begin, both parties negotiated a settlement out of court, ending the litigation.

[20] Yarro, Mott, and Christensen remained terminated, but an undisclosed amount of money was paid by the Canopy Group to them.

[20] Canopy agreed to relinquish ownership of all its 5.49 million shares in The SCO Group, transferring them to Yarro along with an undisclosed sum of money.

[25][11] And, as the Salt Lake Tribune wrote, "Suicides have ended up becoming the tragic bookends for the bitter struggle to control Utah's Canopy Group.

"[25] The first was when Robert L. Penrose, Canopy's director of information systems and technology, died of suicide in December 2004, days after becoming distraught at the ouster of Yarro and the others, and the second was when Ray Noorda's daughter Val Noorda Kreidel, one of the major participants in the lawsuits, died of suicide in March 2005, less than a week after the settlement was reached.

[11] The Canopy Group at one point owned a 5.7 percent stake in Trolltech, the company which developed the Qt toolkit.

[11] They then hired Ron Heinz of Canopy portfolio company Helius, a provider of satellite Internet technology, as managing director.

Prior to his stint at Helius, Heinz was formerly the head of North American Sales for Novell and was responsible for building one of the Canopy Group's profitable ventures.

[29] Under this new leadership, the group looked to revitalize its portfolio, take a more public role towards early seed funding, and actively invest in Utah high technology companies and their development again.

[29] In September 2006 the Canopy Group made a major investment in Solera Networks, a network security forensics firm founded in 2004 and headed by former Caldera and Lineo co-founder Bryan Sparks; it was the first investment of any significance that Canopy had made in two years.

[19] Canopy Properties, which employs Cushman & Wakefield for its building services, has continued on into the 2020s with its five-building campus in Lindon.