By Dan Levine
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 1 (Reuters) - A California appeals court
on Thursday rejected an attempt by Oracle Corp to quickly end a
bitter lawsuit brought by Hewlett-Packard Corp over Oracle's
decision in 2011 to end support for HP's Itanium based servers.
HP accused Oracle of violating a contract when it decided it
would no longer make new versions of its database software,
which was compatible with HP's high-end servers based on Intel
Corp's Itanium chips. Oracle maintained it had no such contract
with HP.
The servers tend to be used by large corporations with
rigorous computing needs.
After a trial last year, a state judge in San Jose,
California ruled that a contract existed between HP and Oracle,
and that Oracle was required to continue to offer its product
suite on HP's Itanium server platform. Oracle was required to
port its products to HP's Itanium-based servers without charge
to HP, the judge ruled.
Damages will be decided at a subsequent phase of trial.
In 2012, Oracle asked a California appeals court to reverse
the contract ruling, which could have ended the case. However,
California's 6th District Court of Appeal rejected the request
late on Thursday, without further explanation.
Oracle must now wait until the trial is over to appeal all
of the issues at once.
Representatives for both companies declined to comment.
The case in the 6th Appellate District is Oracle Corporation
vs. Superior Court (Hewlett-Packard Company), number H038880.
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