The Nasdaq stock exchange has abandoned its delisting procedure for software vendor SCO. 

The exchange started the procedure in April after SCO's stock fell beneath $1 for more than 30 days earlier this year. The company's shares currently trade at $1.30, valuing the firm at nearly $28m.

If a company is delisted, investors will no longer be able to buy and sell its shares through the exchange.

Instead they would have to turn to so-called over-the-counter markets where stocks are directly traded between the buyer and seller. A delisting drastically reduces a company's access to capital markets.

SCO claims to own copyrights for the Unix operating system. In 2003 it filed a series of lawsuits against Linux vendors and users, and started selling so-called SCOsource licences that entitled companies to use Linux.  

The legal offensive caused an initial spike in SCO's stock price. But investors turned their back on the company when it failed to produce any evidence of its Unix ownership.

Sales of SCOsource licences evaporated and the company faced a customer pullout for attacking the open source operating system.

SCO reported revenues of a mere $6m and a loss of $1.1m in the last quarter.