In 2003, the SCO Group claimed that the increasingly popular free Linux operating system contained substantial amounts of Unix code that IBM had improperly put there.

Despite the industry's attention to the lawsuits, SCO continued to maintain a product focus as well, putting out a major new release of OpenServer that incorporated the UnixWare kernel inside it.

On August 26, 2002, he announced at the company's annual Forum conference – relocated from Santa Cruz to Las Vegas – that Caldera International was changing its name to The SCO Group.

[16] SCOBiz was a collaboration with the Bellingham, Washington-based firm Vista.com, founded in 1999 by John Wall, in which SCO partners could sell Vista.com's online, web-based e-commerce development and hosting service targeted at small and medium-sized businesses.

[16] More importantly, as part of SCOBiz, the two companies would develop a SOAP- and XML-based web services interface to enable Vista.com e-commerce front-ends to communicate with existing back-end SCO-based applications.

[10] Industry analysts were somewhat skeptical of the chances for SCOBiz succeeding, as the market was already crowded with application service provider offerings and the dot-com bubble had already burst by that point.

[25] The SCOx software framework was announced in April 2003; its aim was to enable the SCO developer and reseller community to be able to connect web services and web-based presentation layers to the over 4,000 different applications that ran small and midsize businesses and branch offices.

[37] On March 6, 2003, SCO filed suit against IBM, claiming that the computer giant had misappropriated trade secrets by transferring portions of its Unix-based AIX operating system into Linux, and asked for at least $1 billion in damages.

[38][note 3] The complaint also alleged breach of contract and tortious interference by IBM against the Santa Cruz Operation for its part in the failed Project Monterey of the late 1990s.

[42] Many industry analysts were not impressed by the lawsuit, with one saying: "It's a fairly end-of-life move for the stockholders and managers of that company [...] This is a way of salvaging value out of the SCO franchise they can't get by winning in the marketplace.

"[41] Other analysts pointed to the deep legal resources IBM had for any protracted fight in the courts, but McBride professed to be nonplussed: "If it takes a couple of years, we're geared to do that.

[46] While the formal announcement that United Linux had ended did not come until January 2004, in reality the project stopped doing any tangible work soon after SCO filed its lawsuit against IBM.

[46] A few days later, Microsoft – which had long expressed disdain for Linux – said that it was acquiring a Unix license from SCO,[47] in order to ensure interoperability with its own products and to ward off any questions about rights.

[48] Another major computer company, Sun Microsystems, bought an additional level of Unix licensing from SCO to add to what it had originally obtained a decade earlier.

The SCOsource division got off to a quick start, bringing in $8.8 million during the company's second fiscal quarter, which led to the SCO Group turning a profit for the first time in its Caldera-origined history.

[60] Vultus made the WebFace Solution Suite, a web-based application development environment with a set of browser-based user interface elements that provided a richer UI functionality without the need for Java applets or other plug-ins.

And in 2006, Santa Cruz Operation co-founder Doug Michels made a return to the SCO Forum stage, with McBride presenting him an award for lifetime achievement.

[102] Accordingly, in August 2004, SCO renegotiated its deal with its lawyers to put into place a cap on legal expenses at $31 million, in return for which Boise, Schiller & Flexner would receive a larger share of any eventual settlement.

[110] UnixWare 7.1.4 was released in June 2004, with major new features including additional hardware support, improved security, and the abovementioned SCOx web services components.

Among the items talked about was Smallfoot, a toolkit for developing customized, small-footprint versions of UnixWare for use as an embedded operating system, and an upgrade to the SCOoffice mail and messaging product.

[118] A review of the SCOoffice technology in PCQuest in 2002 found its ease of installation and features to be good and that it was "a decent package for companies looking for a mail server solution.

[109] Accordingly, the SCO Group devoted a large effort, consisting of extensive research and development as well as associated product management activities, into producing the more modern OpenServer Release 6, code-named "Legend".

[130] As SCO marketing executive Tim Negris said, the idea of EdgeClickPark was to provide a mechanism for "individuals and organizations of all kinds to participate in developing, selling and using digital services.

[152] The interest of Stephen Norris Capital Partners in the SCO Group started in February 2008, when it put forward a $100 million reorganization and debt financing plan for the company, which it would then take private.

[153] There was also an unnamed Middle East partner in the proposed deal; the Associated Press reported that Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia was involved.

[149] That plan did not materialize,[148] and instead in June 2009 a new proposal emerged from a combination of Gulf Capital Partners, of which Stephen Norris was an investor, and MerchantBridge, a London-based, Middle East-focused private equity group, to create an entity called UnXis, which would then buy SCO's software business assets for $2.4 million.

[165] In October 2009, a restructuring requested by trustee Cahn led to the termination of McBride and the elimination of the CEO position; the existing COO, Jeff Hunsaker, became the top executive in the company.

[167] A three-week trial was held in March 2010, at the conclusion of which the jury reached a unanimous verdict that the Novell did not transfer the Unix copyrights to the Santa Cruz Operation in 1995.

[176] It would be up to UnXis to hire SCO Group employees, of whom, after years of layoffs and attrition, only handfuls were still left at various locations (for instance, at the Lindon, Utah site, only 7 or 8 people still worked, compared with 115 as recently as February 2008).

[183] McBride turned his purchase of SCO's mobility assets into a company called Shout TV Inc., which was founded in late 2011 and provided social media engagement for sports fans during live events by offering trivia games and prize contests.