REDWOOD SHORES (dpa-AFX) - Technology giant Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) said Monday that the Superior Court of the State of California rejected enterprise software giant Oracle Corp.'s (ORCL) attempt to use fraud claim to undo a contract related to the continued support to HP's customers for Oracle software running on Intel Corp.'s (INTC) Itanium platform. HP said the court filings highlight Oracle's anti-customer business strategy as both Intel and HP have committed support for Itanium that extends through the end of this decade. Intel and HP already have a contract for the continued development and supply of Itanium, and have had one since 2004. 'HP is pleased that the Superior Court of the State of California, Santa Clara County, has rejected Oracle's attempt to use a fraud claim to undo its contract with HP. We look forward to seeing the facts made public that demonstrate how Oracle's March 2011 announcement to no longer develop software for Itanium servers was part of a calculated business strategy to drive hardware sales from Itanium to inferior Sun servers,' HP said in a statement released after the ruling. Palo Alto, California-based HP added in the statement that it further demonstrates the fact that Oracle breached its contractual commitment to HP and ignored its repeated promises of support to their shared customers. Separately, Oracle said in a statement, 'Oracle is delighted that the Superior Court of the State of California, Santa Clara County, has rejected HP's attempt to hide the truth about Itanium's certain end of life from its customers, partners and own employees. We look forward to seeing all of the facts made public that demonstrate how HP has known for years that Itanium is end of life.' In the lawsuit filed in mid-June, HP alleged that Oracle breached an agreement to support its software running on Itanium microprocessors, and accused it of engaging in unfair competition by trying to force HP's Itanium customers to shift to hardware supplied by Oracle. Meanwhile, Oracle responded to the lawsuit then by denying HP's claims on breach of an agreement. Oracle said that HP explicitly asked it to guarantee continued support for Itanium while framing the agreement, but was refused by Oracle and the support guarantee clause was deleted in the final signed agreement in September 2010. Oracle also charged HP of knowingly withholding information from HP-Oracle joint Itanium customers that Intel's future direction is focused on X86 and that plans to replace Itanium with X86 was already in place. HP also misled customers by issuing numerous public statements to deceive their customers and shareholders into believing that these plans to end-of-life Itanium do not exist. The lawsuit was seeking unspecified damages and an injunction preventing Oracle from making misleading statements in the future that could damage HP's relations with its customers using the Itanium processor. Oracle confirmed in March, when this controversy was created by HP, that it will continue to support its current customers on existing oracle products running on Itanium microprocessors. However, Oracle added then that the new versions of Oracle software will not run on Itanium. Oracle also said then that both Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) have already stopped developing software for Itanium, and added that it is the last of the major software companies to stop development on Itanium. Itanium is a family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture, which was originated at HP, and was later jointly developed by HP and Intel in the 1990s. The processors are used in enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems. Redwood City, California-based Oracle has been a close partner of HP and bundled enterprise software along with the large computing systems that HP sold to corporations. However, they became fierce rivals after Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in early 2010 as well as its hiring of HP's ousted CEO Mark Hurd. SunMicro makes chips that compete with Itanium and servers that compete with HP. ORCL closed Monday's regular trading session at $28.60, up $0.18 or 0.63% on a volume of 23.29 million shares, and HPQ closed at $27.88, unchanged on a volume of 12.12 million shares.
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