HP Enterprise has won USD 3 billion in damages in a suit against Oracle, the Wall Street Journal reports. A jury in Silicon Valley found that Oracle should pay HP Enterprise for violating a contract between the companies when it decided in 2011 to stop creating new versions of its database and other software for systems running Intel’s Itanium chip.
HP had argued that this violated terms of a settlement associated with its hiring of former HP CEO Mark Hurd, and that Oracle, which had expanded into servers by buying Sun Microsystems, had set out to hurt its new rival by the move. This caused "serious damage to HP and our customers,” said John Schultz, HP Enterprise’s general counsel.
Oracle denied wrongdoing. Chairman Larry Ellison testified that the company took action because Intel had decided to stop supporting Itanium—an assertion Intel has denied. Oracle previously resumed developing software for Itanium after an earlier ruling in the case. It vowed to appeal the jury decision.
