The judge presiding over a legal dispute between Hewlett-Packard and Oracle is set to issue a pretrial ruling Wednesday, denying motions by both parties to strike down key components of the case.
Santa Clara County Judge James Kleinberg outlined how he sees the case in a tentative ruling, published on Tuesday. HP and Oracle have until noon Wednesday to contest the ruling before it is entered.
HP sued Oracle last June after Oracle dropped support for the sputtering Itanium processor, saying that Oracle was reneging on a deal between the two companies to keep producing software for HP's high-end Integrity servers, which ship with Itanium chips. Oracle counter-sued in August saying that HP had lied to the world about Itanium's viability, and that this cost Oracle millions in hardware sales.
In his tentative pretrial ruling, Judge Kleinberg doesn't decide any of the issues in the case. He just allows that there aren't any claims that are so weak that they should be tossed out immediately.
Judge Kleinberg said that Oracle may have a case, because while most of HP's statements on Itanium's viability were "obvious forms of puffery, exaggeration or opinion," HP's claim that Itanium's roadmap extended until 2017 may or may not have been false, and therefore in violation of the law. Citing Oracle's own expert witness at the trial, Ramsey Shehadeh, who calculated that HP's claims had cost Oracle $120 million in server sales, Judge Kleinberg said there is at least a "basic rationale" for claiming damages.
As for HP's argument that it had a deal with Oracle to keep the Itanium software coming, Judge Kleinberg writes: "HP submits evidence of Oracle's private assurances to HP to continue to offer its products.... HP's reliance on such assurances is not unreasonable as a matter of law."
All told, Judge Kleinberg looks ready to deny two of HP's motions and one of Oracle's. He also seems set to compel Intel to finally cough up some real Itanium profit and loss figures, following months of legal dickering. Although HP is pretty much the only company left that sells Itanium systems, the chips themselves are built by Intel. Oracle wants to know how much money Intel has made from Itanium, in hopes of proving that Itanium was on life support, even as HP executives were pumping it up.
If Kleinberg's ruling stands, no doubt both Oracle and HP will claim a victory. As this court dispute has already shown, that's just how they roll.
Meanwhile, 50 miles north in San Francisco, another court could deliver a ruling in another high-profile Oracle lawsuit Wednesday. That's where a jury is deliberating whether Google violated Oracle's copyright by writing its own version of Java instead of taking out a software license.
