Not all of Oracle’s attentions this week were focused on Sun. Its lawyers Monday were busy suing Oracle-targeting discount maintenance house Rimini Street and its CEO Seth Ravin for a gaggle of reasons like copyright infringement, breach of contract, fraud, economic interference, unfair competition and unjust enrichment. Oracle wants unspecified damages and an injunction.
The 42-page suit is a replay of Oracle’s still-unresolved suit against SAP, which, to its regret, bought TomorrowNow, another third-party discount maintenance operation started by Ravin.
In 2007 Oracle discovered that the reason TomorrowNow could charge cheap prices was that it was siphoning off Oracle IP and software and, after Oracle screamed theft at the top of its voice, SAP closed the joint down after admitting there was illegal copying.
Now apparently Oracle, which is ever so protective of its pricey maintenance contracts, wants Rimini to do the same thing.
Its suit, filed in federal court in Nevada where Rimini lives, charges the company with “massive theft of Oracle’s software and related support materials through an illegal business model.”
Like the SAP-TomorrowNow suit, Oracle claims that Rimini “typically logs on to Oracle’s password-protected technical support web sites using a customer credential then downloads software and support materials in excess of the customer’s authorization under its license agreement.” Oracle claims the automated bot-based breaches have been so vast its databases freeze up.
Naturally given his history Oracle blames Ravin, who left TomorrowNow soon after SAP bought it in 2005, and wants it “to stop once and for all.” It says his tactics threaten “irreparable harm to Oracle, its many employees, customers, shareholders and the industry-at-large.”
It claims that Rimini, like TomorrowNow, “does not have the development capacity to meet the support commitments it advertises at any price, much less the 500% discount it promotes. It certainly has not matched Oracle’s investment in development resources, or even come close to it.”
In response, Rimini put out a statement saying its 2009 revenues had tripled on the back of nearly 300 clients including Global and Fortune 500s, government agencies and SMBs and promised Oracle a fight accusing it of trying to “forestall competition and limit market choices.”
Rimini offers support for Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and SAP and Oracle believes they’re at least some of the ones TomorrowNow used to service. Discovery that it gets from Rimini can impact the damages sought in the SAP case.
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