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SCO Wants to Sell Java Patent and (Mostly) Pay the Professionals

By Pamela Jones et al.

SCO Chapter 11 Trustee Edward Cahn has now reported to the bankruptcy court that he's closed on the loan from Ralph Yarro and his friends, and now Cahn wants to pay most of the bills in the bankruptcy from SCO's numerous professionals. And he wants to sell the Java patent, since SCO's never used it and has no use for it going forward. He has a buyer, Liberty Lane, LLC, and so he asks the court to approve the sale to Liberty Lane "or another higher and better bidder." That seems unlikely, in that they claim to have shopped the patent to around 40 potential purchasers. Liberty Lane is offering $100,000.

Cahn says he "will pay 80% of fees and 100% of expenses to all of the estates' professionals who have filed (i) monthly and/or interim fee applications for such fees and expenses and (ii) certifications of no objections with respect thereto pursuant to the Interim Compensation Order", but doesn't yet want to pay the last 20% of PSZ&J's bill "until such time as the Trustee has reviewed and evaluated the reasonableness of all fees and expenses generated by the Debtors' and these estates' professionals".

So that's where the loan goes, for starters. He's not singling them out, by the way, except for the fact that he wants to wait until all the final bills are in, so he can evaluate reasonableness in a context, and so far they are the only ones that have filed a final bill.

Full post as published by Groklaw on March 30, 2010 (boomark / email).