Novell fired its first legal salvo against the bankrupt SCO Group when it sought to lift the Lindon company's bankruptcy protections so it can recover millions of dollars in licensing fees it claims SCO wrongfully "hijacked."

The Waltham, Mass., software developer is seeking to lift a bankruptcy stay on litigation against SCO so a federal court trial in Utah can proceed to determine the amount of licensing fees Novell is entitled to, and for a constructive trust to be put in place to protect those funds. SCO CEO Darl McBride said in bankruptcy court papers that Novell has claimed the licensing fees could amount to more than $37 million plus interest.

SCO, which had been embroiled in a four-year legal battle against Novell over intellectual property rights to Unix, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on the eve of a five-day trial that would have wrapped up the remainder of the lawsuit. The trial, which was to have been held Sept. 17, would have examined whether SCO had the authority to collect the Unix license fees and what portion of fees it collected and retained from Microsoft and Sun Microsystems and other Linux customers should be returned to Novell.

The bankruptcy filing came a month after U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled Novell, and not SCO, owns the copyrights to Unix -- undermining SCO's long-held claims that IBM stole code from Unix and put it into the freely distributed Linux operating system. Kimball also found SCO's conduct constituted "breach of fiduciary duty, conversion, unjust enrichment and breach of express contract."

"We need to adjudicate if this is money owed to Novell or if it is Novell's property," said Bruce Lowry, spokesman for Novell. That could determine how quickly Novell can recover those funds.

And time is of the essence since there's a possibility SCO "may run low or even completely out of cash during the process of trying to reorganize," Novell said in court documents filed Thursday.

Novell is also trying to protect royalties SCO collects from Unix and Unixware software licensees and remits annually to the software developer. SCO is required to continue to remit between $500,000 and $800,000 annually to Novell -- the next payment is due Nov. 14. SCO remitted $696,413 to Novell between the third quarter of 2006 and the second quarter of this year.

"Absent SCO's immediate remittance of the royalties to Novell, SCO may improperly use Novell's property to fund SCO's bankruptcy, making Novell a forced lender of new high-risk loans to the estate," Novell said. "This would turn Novell's property into an involuntary gift to the estate and its creditors."

SCO officials didn't return calls for comment on Novell's allegations.