Judiciary
RIMINI Street, Inc. a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products, and a Salesforce partner, has issued the following statement in response to a recent court order in the decade-long litigation between Rimini Street and Oracle, where the courts have found that third-party support and customization of enterprise software is permitted, Oracle licensees have a choice of support vendors and, as stated by the United States Court of Appeals, Rimini Street provides third-party support for Oracle’s enterprise software in lawful competition with Oracle’s direct maintenance services:
“On March 31, 2021, the United States District Court for Nevada issued an order resolving many outstanding disputes between the parties related to a permanent injunction that has been in place since 2018. The injunction does not prohibit Rimini Street’s provision of support services for any Oracle product lines but rather defines the manner in which Rimini Street can provide support services for certain Oracle product lines.
Most importantly, the Court affirmed that there has been no finding of infringement by the Court of the Company’s enterprise software support Process 2.0 or Automation Framework, AFW, tools, finding that, as Rimini Street requested when it filed the Rimini Street v. Oracle litigation in 2014, those issues will be heard and decided by a jury.
Additionally, the Court ruled in the Company’s favor on the ability of Rimini Street’s engineers to learn and gain experience from their work. Oracle has claimed that Rimini Street engineers infringe Oracle’s copyrights and violate court orders by merely applying their learning and using know-how gained supporting one client to support other clients running the same licensed software.
Building on the Court’s previous denial of these Oracle claims, the Court further noted in its most recent order that ‘[i]t is common sense that Rimini’s engineers would get better and faster at conducting a task with more experience.’
The Court also clarified and affirmed other important provisions of its previous and most recent orders in Rimini Street’s favor while denying Oracle claims, stating that accepting some of Oracle’s claims would result in an ‘absurd result.’
The Court also denied Oracle’s motions for sanctions, noting that it did not find any inappropriate conduct by Rimini Street and therefore found no basis for any sanctions.
The Court did find that Rimini Street has violated the injunction in certain narrow instances and circumstances, including with respect to two deliverables relating to two specific clients in 2014 and 2015. However, the cited activities for these two specific deliverables occurred before the injunction was in place and therefore cannot be a violation of the injunction. The Court has scheduled an evidentiary hearing in September 2021.
‘For more than 15 years, Rimini Street has brought disruptive, innovative support options to enterprise software licensees, delivered savings of more than $5 billion to date and achieved an average client satisfaction rating of 4.9 out of 5.0, where 5.0 is excellent. Despite more than a decade of continuous litigation with Oracle, Rimini Street has grown year after year with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% and served thousands of Oracle clients around the world – including Fortune 500, Fortune Global 100 and government agencies in many countries,’ said Seth A Ravin, CEO, co-founder and chairman of the board. ‘We plan to continue methodically prosecuting our litigation with Oracle, including our claim of illegal anticompetitive conduct against Oracle, and look forward to ultimately prevailing.’”
– Apr. 07, 2021 @ 9:03 GMT
Tags: Court rules in Rimini Street’s favour on key matters
