HP in late April sued Oracle over the software creation that runs on HP System Intel’s Itanium chips. Oracle’s attorney ruled out a settlement with HP with a day after the judge refused to resolve the case for either side before trial. Oracle attorney Dan Wall said a settlement of the lawsuit “isn’t going to happen.” In the last week court filing, Oracle said that HP is seeking about $4 billion in lost profit damages from Oracle, which argues that HP’s claims are meritless.
The story of using the Itanium chip winded up last year when Oracle decided to stop developing software for use with Itanium, saying Intel will not support the chip as it was nearing the end of its life and that Intel was shifting its focus to its x86 microprocessor. But HP argues that Oracle and HP had agreed that support for Itanium would continue, without which the HP equipment using the chip would become obsolete.
Both sides attempted to convince Judge James Kleinberg to hand them a win before trial, which is scheduled to start at the end of the month. But Kleinberg denied those motions in a tentative ruling on Tuesday. In court on Wednesday, Kleinberg compared the case to a divorce, saying “this case appears to be the end of a marriage” between the technology giants. “You have to give serious consideration to settlement,” Kleinberg said.
