I have posted on BusinessGeek about SCO’s latest fun and games in declaring bankruptcy. I don’t believe they are ignorant of the fact that doing so won’t protect them from paying Novell, you cannot protect money that doesn’t rightfully belong to you. It is also unlikely to be a tactic to turn the tide in their ongoing law suits.
The likely reason is a hail-mary to try and save at least a part of the company as a going concern. They do have products that are marketable and the possibility of making a business out of them. And although they are not doing anything with it, they do still own a Linux distribution (Caldera). The US part of the company is essentially doomed though, and there is little hope for whatever part of the company they can salvage.
If they restrict the damage to the US, they will lose everything to do with Unix, and probably the old SCO business, but they may retain something outside of US court juristiction which they can sell to return something to the shareholders. Everything within the US is likely to end up with Novell, which means they would get back what they sold to SCO for the price of a lawsuit.