A federal jury Tuesday found that Novell Inc., and not The SCO Group, owns the copyrights to the Unix computer operating systems used by many businesses.

The decision ends a long-running legal battle between the two companies and between Lindon-based SCO and IBM. It also likely means the end of SCO, which already is teetering in bankruptcy court.

Lawyers for SCO had contended Novell owed it millions of dollars for lost sales revenue and that it was due punitive damages on top of that. SCO claimed it lost as much as $215 million as a result of Novell's actions, which stretch back to 2003.

After a three-week trial and closing arguments from each side before presiding Judge Ted Stewart, the jury filed out of the courtroom to begin deliberations Friday. The jury went home 4½ hours later and reconvened this morning.

SCO sued in 2004 after Novell claimed it had retained the copyrights when it sold Unix in 1995. That claim came after SCO had sued IBM for allegedly using SCO's copyrighted software code for improvements that made the Linux operating system a competitor to Unix in the world of business computing.

About the same time, SCO also sent letters to businesses using Linux, demanding they buy licenses from SCO because Linux made use of the Unix code. That action angered the open source community that supports Linux, whose underlying codes are open to the public and can be used by companies to create products.