HP and Oracle Talk Pretrial Trash in Itanium Case

All Things D: James Kleinberg, the judge overseeing the upcoming HP vs. Oracle trial about the Itanium platform, has dismissed summary judgement motions from both companies. Although that decision wasn’t surprising, both sides seized on the ruling as an opportunity to discredit their opponent.

“HP cannot be happy with this decision,” said Oracle lawyer Dan Wall. “The Court did not accept HP’s interpretation of the Hurd settlement agreement; in fact, it rejected out of hand the most recent version of HP’s argument, which equated the contract with terms HP proposed, but Oracle rejected. HP’s lawsuit, like Itanium itself, is living on borrowed time and will never succeed.”

HP took the opposite view of the ruling and responded with a statement saying, “HP is pleased that the Court ruled that the language in the HP/Oracle agreement can be interpreted to require Oracle to continue porting its software products to the HP Integrity platform, as Oracle did for years before the agreement. As the ruling states, Oracle’s interpretation would make the agreement ‘illusory’ and ‘should be rejected.’ We look forward to trial, where the details of Oracle’s deliberate, anti-customer business strategy to drive hardware sales from Itanium to inferior Sun servers will be revealed.”