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Oracle must port its software to Hewlett Packard's Itanium servers, a San Jose, California judge said on Wednesday.
It's a major victory in a nasty lawsuit that has pitted two of the world's biggest technology companies against each other and cost customers millions of dollars.
At issue is a 2010 agreement between Oracle and HP that "reaffirmed" their partnership. HP said that this amounted to a contract that forced Oracle to keep producing software that ran on its Itanium servers. But Oracle said it was more of a feel-good press-release type of thing.
In a tentative ruling, Judge James Kleinberg sided with HP. The agreement is a contract, he wrote, and Oracle must continue porting its software to Itanium -- at no charge -- until HP discontinues Itanium. Because Kleinberg is tagged as tentative, HP and Oracle have 15 days to appeal it before it is entered into the court record.
"HP’s argument turns the concept of Silicon Valley ‘partnerships’ upside down," Oracle said in a statement Wednesday. "We plan to appeal the Court's ruling while fully litigating our cross claims that HP misled both its partners and customers."
Dreamt up by HP and Intel in the mid 1990s, Itanium was supposed to be the standard chip for data centers. But Itanium was a flop in the market. It cost too much, didn't perform that well, and was marred by shipment delays. Still, it became the processor of choice for HP and is used by more than 100,000 Oracle customers.
Those customers have been wondering if they'd be able to run upcoming versions of Oracle's software since March 2011, when Oracle abruptly announced that it was dumping Itanium. HP later sued Oracle, and Oracle counter-sued.
On August 22nd, the trial will enter a second phase, when a Jury will decide if Oracle breached its contract with HP by dumping Itanium and how much -- if any -- damages the database giant must pay.
Proposed Ruling In HP v. Oracle Itanium trial#iframe: http://www.scribd.com/embeds/101779780/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-ug1sp95xii04fggi3lu||||||
