SCO Group shares went south in a hurry during Friday's trading, as investors reacted to the company's legal misfortunes.

SCOX dropped 40 per cent to $1.20 per share, at the time of this report. That's well off a 52-week high of $5.23 and light-years away from the more than $20 per share price SCO enjoyed a couple years back. The share price collapse follows a judge's decision to uphold an earlier ruling that nixed 187 of SCO's 294 claims against IBM.

Those of you with a pulse know that SCO has been battling IBM over intellectual property issues tied to the Unix and Linux operating systems. When SCO first announced its lawsuit, investors rushed to back the small software maker, hoping they would be rewarded by a massive pay out when SCO defeated Big Blue. Over the past couple of years, however, SCO's share price has plummeted with judges throwing out many of the company's complaints and chastising SCO for failing to show evidence that IBM infringed its IP.

Groklaw has done a nice job of addressing the latest ruling against SCO. ®