SCO recently attempted to have Kimball determine that the Aug. 10 ruling was final and thereby allow SCO to quickly appeal those matters, but Kimball rejected that motion. Kimball also recently ruled that remaining issues in the Novell trial would be determined by himself rather than a jury.

Kimball noted that Novell was seeking only an interpretation of the parties' rights rather than legal damages or a determination of lost sales or lost profits arising from SCO's actions.

"They were going to owe Novell a ton of money that they probably didn't have," said Rob Enderle, an industry analyst in San Jose, Calif. "They have been taking a major hit from legal fees and were burning through cash at a high rate. I don't think this is a big surprise."

In bankruptcy court documents filed Friday, SCO Operations Inc. submitted a list of more than 700 creditors. The largest, AMICI LLC of Albany, N.Y., was owed $500,650.73.

Checkboxes in the court documents indicated SCO Operations had estimated assets between $1 million and $100 million and estimated liabilities in that same range. Bloomberg News reported that SCO listed $14.8 million in assets and $7.5 million in debt in its bankruptcy petition.

SCO turned to the copyright lawsuits as it faced a shrinking market and competition from free software, said Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia Law School who is the founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center.

Trading in the company's stock was halted Friday afternoon, two hours before SCO issued the statement saying it had filed for bankruptcy. When it resumed, SCO's shares plummeted, falling 43 percent to 37 cents a share. During the past year, the price has ranged from 35 cents to $3.11.

---

SCO timeline

The shares hit an all-time high of $117.75 on March 21, 2000, the day after SCO's initial public offering

The SCO Group's most recent quarterly financial report showed the company lost $1.1 million, or 5 cents per share, during the quarter ended April 30. That compared with a loss of $4.7 million, or 22 cents per share, for the same quarter a year earlier. Revenues were $6 million, down from $7.1 million in the prior-year quarter.

Company officials had repeated cited "competitive pressures" as the reason for losses and slipping revenue.

---

Contributing: Bloomberg News, Associated Press, Angie Welling, Geoffrey Fattah