Four years ago Oracle Corp. began legal action against a third party maintenance support firm called Rimini Street, alleging copyright infringement for software copied from customers onto Rimini servers. (We wrote about the dispute it here.)
Over time, the fight has stretched into other areas, most recently with Rimini alleging it had been defamed by Oracle in public statements. But the issues are being narrowed.
Now Oracle says it won a big victory Thursday with a Las Vegas judge agreeing in a partial summary judgment that the company has established at first look (prima facie) that Rimini did infringe on its Oracle Database software copyright. Not only that, the judge dismissed Rimini’s defamation claim, meaning Oracle can continue to say Rimini engaged in theft of its intellectual property.
Read the judge’s decision here.
Court order in Oracle Inc. v. Rimini Street Inc. – U.S. District of Nevada
Both sides issued press releases, although many issues still have to be decided by a trial.
Oracle’s release said Thursday’s decision followed a February ruling that Rimini Street infringed on Oracle’s PeopleSoft copyright and proved prima facie copyright infringement on its JD Edwards and Siebel copyrights.
“The court’s ruling today, like the court’s ruling in February, is an important vindication of Oracle’s intellectual property rights,” Oracle attorney Geoff Howard said in the release. “After today’s ruling, Rimini can no longer deny that it engaged in ‘massive theft’ of Oracle’s intellectual property. We look forward to holding Rimini Street and Seth Ravin accountable at trial for the damages caused by their misconduct.”
For its part, Rimini’s release said it respectfully disagrees with Thursday’s ruling and reserves the right to appeal. It also said the decision related to Oracle Database software no longer in use at Rimini, so it won’t cause any disruption to customers.
“Both rulings relate primarily to a group of clients who provided copies of their Oracle licensed PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel software to Rimini Street for installation on Rimini Street servers for use as test/development environments, and to underlying Oracle Database software licenses that were used to operate these client test/development environments,” Rimini said in a background document sent to reporters.
“As Rimini Street no longer uses these Rimini Street-hosted environments (they have all been migrated to client servers with client’s own copy of Oracle Database), the Court’s rulings will not cause any interruptions to service for any client or any product line.
“Rimini Street looks forward to our long-awaited and anticipated day in front of a jury, and we will continue to vigorously defend the lawsuit and attempt to reach a fair resolution,” the statement added.
