It's beginning to look as though we may get to hear this year if the federal appeals court buys the idea that Novell owns Unix.

SCO's appeal of the Utah district court's 2007 summary judgment finding in Novell's favor has been put on an expedited schedule by the US Court of Appeals for the 10^th Circuit in Denver.

That means that a decision could be handed down sometime in the fall.

The Denver court has told SCO that it can file its opening brief as soon as it's ready; it doesn't have to wait for the March 6 deadline SCO was seeking.

As soon as SCO files, the clock will start on when Novell has to file its response brief. The rule in the 10^th Circuit is 30 days. Novell has already asked for 60 days. Its foot-dragging didn't go down well with the circuit court, which "discouraged" Novell "from filing any motion for extension of time within which to file its response brief."

The court also disabused Novell of the idea that if it went ahead and did file for an extension it could get 30 days. The court said it would be "limited to a single extension of time of no more than 15 days."

We'll take a wild guess that Novell figured an extension would push out the hearing and perforce move the appeal court's decision into next year. But that's sheer speculation.

Anyway, the court also told SCO that it can file its retort to Novell's response brief the day after Novell files it if it wants to. It also said it assumes SCO wants an expedited hearing and told SCO it can ask for one as soon as the appeal is fully briefed.

That suggests the appeal could be heard sometime this spring.

Judge Dale Kimball, the Utah justice who decided that Novell owns Unix - and so had every right to order SCO to drop its claims against IBM and Sequent for allegedly poaching Unix code and sticking it in Linux - has wracked up a long list of overturned decisions.

And his SCO decision is said to have a good chance of being overturned because Kimball ignored the basic rules of civil procedure in issuing a summary judgment in the first place.

Summary judgment is not supposed to weigh evidence, champion one side's interpretation of the fact over the other's, or decide that one set of witness is more credible than another. That's what juries are for. And that's why there's going to be a lot of surprised lawyers if Kimball isn't overturned.

He denied SCO the jury trial it was expecting so if his summary judgment is overturned SCO's slander-of-title/breech-of-contract/copyright infringement case against Novell will go back to a jury in Utah and, if SCO wins there - and moot courts suggest it will - well then, the question of whether Linux stole Unix code will again be troubling Linux users, particularly IBM's Linux users.

And given the state of SCO's finances, or lack of them, it will probably think about resuscitating its Linux tax scheme.

If SCO loses the appeal, it'll be pushing up daisies, if it isn't already.