Michael A. Jacobs

San Francisco

Practice: litigation

Specialty: intellectual property

Jacobs helped lift "a cloud" that had been hovering over the software industry with his long and hard-fought win for Novell against the SCO Group after seven years of litigation.

In March 2010, following a three-week trial, a jury determined that Novell owned the copyrights to the UNIX computer operating system. SCO Group v. Novell, 2:04-CV-00139, (D.Utah, filed Feb. 6, 2004).

Last month, Jacobs scored again when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court finding.

"We hope and anticipate that this brings finality to the long-running dispute," Jacobs said.

The cloud over Novell had been the threat of having to pay SCO between $115 million and $200 million in damages.

"They were saying that Novell acted with malice in claiming that Novell owned the copyrights," Jacobs said. "They were seeking damages in the hundreds of millions for Novell's allegedly slanderous statements about ownership."

Freedom of speech played a key role in the dispute, he said.

"We are protected by the First Amendment," he said. "They have to show not only slander of title, but constitutional malice in order to collect damages from us."

No case had ever held that, in a commercial context, the defendant was protected by the First Amendment in making these comments, Jacobs said.

"It was pretty groundbreaking," he said.

The case was being closely watched by the Software industry, Jacobs said.

"To remove this cloud has had wide implications for the software community, he said.

- PAT BRODERICK