With bankruptcy, SCO now facing Nasdaq delisting

Following its bankruptcy filing, The SCO Group may be booted off of the Nasdaq stock exchange as early as next week, the Unix vendor said Wednesday.

The stock exchange informed SCO on Tuesday that "the Company's securities will be delisted from Nasdaq on September 27, 2007, pending an appeal," SCO said in a statement.

This comes as a result of the company's recent filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, SCO said.

SCO has asked for a hearing to appeal the decision, so it may be able to stave off delisting if it can present the Nasdaq's Listing Qualifications Panel -- a group of independent industry experts -- with a viable business plan, said Wayne Lee, a Nasdaq spokesman.

The delisting notice is the latest in a series of bad news for the company, stemming from its Aug. 10 legal defeat to Novell. In a series of rulings, a federal judge found that Novell and not SCO owned copyright to the Unix operating system.

In addition to putting SCO in a position where it may have to pay millions of dollars in compensation to Novell, the ruling also undermined SCO's legal battle with IBM, which relates to IBM's support of the Linux operating system.

"As a result of both the Court's August 10, 2007, ruling and the Company's entry into Chapter 11, there is substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a growing concern," SCO said in its most recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.