HP officials shot back at Oracle, saying they were willing to make public the legal documents that settled the lawsuit over Oracle's hiring of ex-HP CEO Mark Hurd last year.
Hewlett-Packard
officials are ramping up the invectives in the increasingly ugly legal dispute
with Oracle over the giant software maker's decision to end support for Intel's
Itanium chip platform.
Responding
to accusations Oracle made last week that they were trying to hide information,
HP officials said in court documents July 7 that they were open to all
information surrounding what they claim was a legal agreement between the two
companies to continue supporting products used by joint customers.
HP
is suing Oracle, claiming that as part of a settlement with Oracle over
Oracle's hiring last year of former HP CEO Mark Hurd, the two sides agreed to
the joint product support, something HP says Oracle is violating by dropping
software development support for Itanium.
Oracle
officials, who last week called the
HP
lawsuit a "publicity stunt," argued that there was no legal agreement
between Oracle and HP. The settlement was more of a "corporate hug" designed to
smooth the increasingly deteriorating relationship between what had been two
strong partners. Oracle officials are arguing that HP's desire to keep that
agreement sealed-or at least parts of it redacted-were an attempt to hide
information that could be damaging to HP's case.
HP
officials disagreed in court documents filed July 7, and said they were more
than willing to make public the entire settlement over Hurd's hiring by Oracle.
"Oracle
argues in its Opposition that by moving to file its complaint under seal HP is
trying to suppress the truth about the basis for its claims against Oracle," HP
officials wrote. "Nothing could be further from the truth. There is not a
single word in HP's complaint that HP is not willing-indeed eager-to make
public."
HP
officials accused Oracle of a "cheap shot" by disseminating what they said were
misleading statements about the merits of the case.
"Oracle
argues that the provision is merely a 'general reaffirmation of a
non-contractual 'partnership' that 'HP cannot seriously contend' requires
Oracle to continue to port its database and other software to HP's
platforms," HP said in the court document. "Yet that is exactly what
Oracle's own general counsel expressly told HP the provision meant during
negotiation of the agreement."
Oracle
in March announced it was ending support for Itanium, based on comments from
Intel executives that that giant chip maker was ending development of the
processor platform in favor of its x86-based Xeon chips. Oracle joined
Microsoft and Red Hat as other major software makers to stop Itanium support.
Intel
executives quickly disputed Oracle's claim, saying they had a roadmap for
Itanium that stretches out through the rest of the decade. HP officials claimed
Oracle's move was designed to bolster its own SPARC hardware portfolio, which
Oracle inherited when it bought Sun Microsystems last year. HP has based its
high-end server products on Itanium, and it's by far the top user of the chip.
The
Sun acquisition started a downward spiral in the relationship between HP and
Oracle, longtime partners who share about 140,000 customers, many of whom run
Oracle's database software on HP Itanium-based Integrity and NonStop systems.
The relationship was further when Oracle hired Hurd after Hurd was forced to
resign last year as HP's CEO following questions around his personal conduct.
HP
sued Hurd and Oracle over the hiring, and it was the settlement of that suit
that has become the crux of the current legal wrangling between the two
companies.
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