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On Friday, parties in the bitter dispute over The Canopy Group, Inc.s management announced that they have come to a settlement.
This agreement settles the lawsuits between former Canopy executives, Ralph Yarro III, Darcy Mott, and Brent Christensen and the Noorda family, Canopy, and current Canopy management. The trio of fired executives received an undisclosed amount of cash. In addition, Yarrow received all of Canopys shares of The SCO Group, Inc. stock.
The former Canopy executives had been asking for at least $100 million and a return to their former positions, on the grounds that they had been fired illegally. Canopy and the Noorda Family Trust countersued on the grounds that they had illegally paid themselves $20 million over the years.
Both sides had claimed that the other took advantage of Ray Noorda, 80, founder of Canopy and former head of Novell Inc. and his wife Lewena, 81, who are not in the best of health. Ray Noorda also has had seious memory problems for years.
While the warring Canopy factions agreed to a deal earlier this week, it was only on Friday that any details were revealed about the settlement. The two parties also stated that while there were other issues in their agreement, those other matters would be kept confidential.
According to Blake Stowell, director of corporate communications for the Lindon, Utah-based SCO, Yarrow is now the Unix vendors single largest stockholder with approximately 5.4 million shares of stock or about 30 percent of all shares. Canopy no longer has any interest in SCO.
In return, the trio of executives who were fired in December in a company coup, dropped their case again the Noordas, et. al., resigned from all their Canopy and related Canopy companies positions and ceased to hold any financial interest in Canopy.
This move came as a surprise to Stowell and other SCO rank and file employees.
“SCO is pleased that the final settlement between The Canopy Group and its former management has removed any uncertainty regarding The SCO Group and SCO shares that Canopy has owned,” said SCO president and CEO, Darl McBride, in a statement.
“As SCOs largest shareholder, we look forward to Ralph Yarros continued leadership and guidance as chairman of the SCO board,” McBride said. “We also look forward to Darcy Motts continued participation as a SCO board member. We believe that SCO will benefit from their long-term view of SCOs shareholder value.”
“Yarro has not announced any change in course,” said Stowell, when asked about whether Yarrow would continue to push forward with SCOs legal actions against IBM and multiple other companies over Unix/Linux intellectual property and related contractual issues.
