Protected: Expanding Section: Oracle Versus Rimini Street

  • There are a number of third-party support entities, but Rimini Street is the largest.
  • Oracle’s lawsuit has been suing Rimini Street since 2010.
  • At this point, the lawsuit on the factual arguments is over, and the judgments are now about who will pay whose legal fees.

The Intent of the Oracle Lawsuit

A primary intent of the lawsuits is to not only drain Rimini Street of its resources but to get Rimini Street declared as an illegal business model. This has caused Oracle to focus on proving that Rimini Street has been stealing Oracle’s intellectual property.

Oracle as a law firm? 

Oracle has a long term pattern of weaponizing the US legal system.

Oracle is so litigious that it will write legal letters to customers that declare an intent to drop Oracle support, even though the dropping of support is not a legal matter. These letters have no legal basis and are simply an attempt to scare the account into staying with Oracle support.

Because of Oracle’s long term legal posturing, Oracle’s legal statements are unreliable, that is they frequently make legal arguments that are not supported in law.

Oracle’s Public Posturing Against Rimini Street

Oracle publishes articles which misrepresent the conclusions of the courts on their unending litigation against Rimini Street.

If we take the first example, Oracle makes claims in their license agreements and makes statements to customers that are not supported by law. Oracle places things that it prefers to be true in its licensing agreements, but that does not make it necessarily legal. The Oracle database license contains a clause that prevents the publication of benchmarking results. However, there is no reason why this would be legal. There seems no logical support for why a third party cannot support the software of any vendor.

The upshot of the lawsuit(s) against Rimini Street is that Oracle has accomplished the following:

Oracle's Legal Accomplishments Against Rimini Street

Oracle's legal progress scorecard versus Rimini Street.
Oracle's AccomplishmentAccomplishment Description
A "Cooling Effect" on Other third party support companies.Oracle has likely given other third-party support companies pause in offering Oracle support services. Interestingly third-party support companies ranging from Spinnaker Support to Support Revolution do not receive lawsuits from Oracle.
Rimini Street's ReputationOracle has successfully muddied Rimini Street's name, making it sound as if Rimini Street has been involved in something nefarious rather than what it has actually done.
Rimini Street's AttentionOracle has diverted attention and effort from Rimini Street.
Rimini Street's Cost of Doing BusinessOracle has increased Rimini Street's cost of doing business.
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What Oracle Was Not Able to Do

However, what Oracle has not done, is undermine Rimini Street’s business model or make it declared illegal, which was Oracle’s long term objective. Rimini Street did make false statements about how it conducted practices, and they did have to pay out damages to Oracle. However, Oracle has tried to falsely commingle some of Rimini Street’s practices with the entirety of third party support being based upon an illegal model.

The Future of Oracle Third Party Support

And we predict that Rimini Street will enlarge their support business at Oracle’s expense and that more entrants will see the result of the Oracle v. Rimini Street lawsuit as a bellwether to offer support and offer it more publicly.

Furthermore, Rimini Street has done things to reduce their liability to future lawsuits. This is not to say that Oracle will not continue to bring lawsuits, but that it is increasingly unlikely that Oracle will have success in winning future damages against Rimini Street.

Category: Oracle