/// Read the $4 Billion Paragraph That Oracle and HP Are Fighting Over

Oracle and Hewlett-Packard are continuing their fight in a California courtroom over the Itanium chip today. One document is central to that dispute, and for the first time we can see what it says, though it takes some historical unpacking. Remember that the fight between them had its genesis in a settlement that arose from a lawsuit HP filed after Oracle hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd as co-president. In that settlement agreement — which ended HP’s suit over Hurd — is a paragraph that is at the core of the current dispute. Here it is: Reaffirmation of the Oracle-HP Partnership. Oracle and HP reaffirm their commitment to their longstanding strategic relationship and their mutual desire to continue to support their mutual customers. Oracle will continue to offer its product suite on HP platforms, and 1-IP will continue to support Oracle products (including Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM) on its hardware in a manner consistent with that partnership as it existed prior to Oracle’s hiring of Hurd. This is the $4 billion paragraph that HP has sued Oracle to enforce. The agreement has been public for a while, but it bears a re-reading as the case continues today. HP contends that this constitutes an enforceable agreement that requires Oracle to continue to port its software to HP’s Itanium-based server platforms, something it said in March of 2011 that it no longer wants to do. In the document drop embedded below, you see what I think is the final version of the document, along with various drafts of the settlement document drawn up by Oracle and HP lawyers and some of the emails related to it

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Read the $4 Billion Paragraph That Oracle and HP Are Fighting Over