A judge in California ruled in favor of Hewlett-Packard in a lawsuit over a decision by the Oracle Corporation to end support for certain H.P. manufactured servers. Oracle decided last March that it would no longer make new versions of its database software compatible with H.P. servers based on Intel Corp.’s Itanium chips. The servers containing Itanium chips are used mostly by large corporations with rigorous computing needs.
Hewlett-Packard accused Oracle of violating a contract when it made the decision. Oracle maintained that no such contract existed. The companies became rivals when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, moving Oracle into the server hardware field, in which it previously was a partner with H.P. Mark Hurd, H.P.’s former chief executive, was hired by Oracle in 2011 after he left Hewlett amid questions over his relationship with a female contractor. The dispute began soon after.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg found that a contract existed between Hewlett and Oracle. He also wrote that Oracle was required to continue to offer its product suite on Hewlett’s Itanium server platform. The judge finally ruled that Oracle is required to port its products to Hewlett’s Itanium-based servers without charge.
Hewlett-Packard called the ruling “a tremendous win” and said it expected Oracle to comply with its “contractual obligation as ordered by the court.” Hewlett-Packard is seeking as much as $4 billion in damages. It is possible that a jury will decide the issue of damages.
Oracle plans to appeal the ruling. Oracle said in a statement, “We made the decision as we became convinced that Itanium was approaching its end of life and we explained our rationale to customers. Nothing in the court’s preliminary opinion changes that fact.”
