Last Shot for SCO Group

"The bottom line is people are not looking at the case properly," said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. "People are saying what should be vs. what's legally right."

But Cornett said SCO's request for more discovery "almost looks like a stalling tactic" to avoid facing a hearing on IBM's request for partial summary judgment in the case. Cornett believes a partial summary judgment hearing, potentially in late January, could be the next catalyst for the stock.

IBM declined to comment for this story. But in its opposition to SCO's motion to compel discovery, IBM claims it has complied with a court order on discovery, producing nearly 1 million pages of documents, including those from executives, and more than 40 million lines of source code to SCO.

The IBM case is complicated by a federal judge's sealing of some documents and a transcript of a court proceeding.

"I don't know what the judge knows and IBM knows," noted David Kramer, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who specializes in intellectual property law. "We are still operating at an informational disadvantage, and so is the market."

Indeed, sources say that IBM has produced emails revealing the use of a derivative of Unix code, but they have been sealed by the court.

Of course, all of SCO's litigation against IBM is moot if Novell successfully shows that it still owns the copyright to Unix software, which SCO claims it purchased from Novell in 1995 for more than $100 million in stock.

Novell, which sells Linux services and has received $50 million in funding from IBM, claims that SCO's purchase of Unix from Novell excluded the transfer of associated Unix copyrights to SCO, and it cites several documents to support that argument.