The SCO Group today filed suit against Novell for what is called in legal circles slander of title for disparaging SCO's ownership of Unix.

SCO, saying it's been done "irreparable harm" and standing on the once lost, now famous Amendment 2 and the 1995 Asset Purchase Agreement, wants damages, punitive and otherwise, and an injunction against Novell.

SCO says that Novell has made false and misleading claims that Novell owns Unix and UnixWare copyrights and that it made false statements that were intended to persuade customers and potential customers not to do business with SCO.

It also charges Novell with improperly registering copyrights with the US Copyright Office on Unix technology that SCO owns - and actually has duplicate copyrights on - and claims that Novell has attempted to block SCO's ability to enforce its copyrights.

SCO wants the injunction to require Novell to assign to SCO all copyrights that it "wrongfully" registered, prevent Novell from representing any ownership interest in those copyrights and require Novell to retract or withdraw all representations that it has made regarding its purported ownership of those copyrights.

Given their wrangling and Novell's attempt to take the bullet for IBM, it was only a matter of time before the two came to blows in court.

The only surprise here is one of priority. SCO's next legal move was expected to be a suit against an end user charging copyright infringement.