SCO posts revenue increase

The SCO Group, embroiled in a high-profile intellectual property dispute, on Wednesday reported net income of $4.5 million on revenue of $21.4 million for the second quarter.

The Lindon, Utah-based company, which owns rights to Unix intellectual property, said that $13.1 million of the revenue came from its operating systems and $8.3 million from its licensing program. Earnings per share for the quarter, which ended April 30, came in at 33 cents.

In the same quarter a year ago, the company posted a net loss of $6.6 million on revenue of $15.5 million. The results for the April quarter mark the first time the company has logged net income, SCO said.

The company said that it expects revenue for the third quarter, which ends July 31, to be in the range of $19 million to $21 million, with about two-thirds of the revenue coming from operating systems, and one-third from licensing.

Earlier this year, SCO created an uproar in the software community with a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM, alleging that Big Blue misappropriated SCO's trade secrets by building Unix intellectual property into Linux. And in a broader accusation, the company claims that its Unix code has been copied line for line into Linux, the open-source operating system.

In its April results, the company touted early success for its SCOsource initiative to license and protect its Unix property. SCO said that the first two licensing agreements related to the initiative provided the company with $8.8 million in cash and added $6.1 million to its gross margin. SCO said that there are more than 6,000 source code licensees of the Unix operating system.