SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) was an x86 UNIX vendor that wasn't great, but enjoyed a lot of market share. I'd estimate they were #2 to SUN in installations because it ran on commodity x86 hardware. But by the late 1990s, they knew their time was up given the pressure from Linux. When the company was sold to Caldera in Utah, very few original SCO people stayed, and those that did left quickly because Ransom Love (yes, that was his name) made it very clear the Caldera culture was not the old SCO culture, and that you'd have to relocate to Utah.
Following this, Caldera rebranded themselves back to SCO (The SCO Group) in an effort to convince people they were the same company. After all, they needed all the help they could get.
So, essentially, litigation SCO was not the original SCO. And in many ways, litigation SCO tarnished whatever respect the original SCO had.