US: Judge reluctantly preserves antitrust claims against Oracle

Oracle lost a bid Friday to have an antitrust lawsuit against the technology company tossed, say reports.

Third-party technical support companies filed their case against Oracle accusing the firm of restricting competition in the way it provides updates for computer servers. The dispute arose in 2010 when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and subsequently ended its policy of allowing businesses to access and open market of software updates and bug fixes.

The plaintiffs – Terix Computer Company, Maintech and Volt Data Resources – argue that Oracle’s business practices are anticompetitive and allowed the company to monopolize the market for support services of operating system Solaris.

On Friday, US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal allowed the lawsuit to proceed, but not without hesitation. “With respect to certain of defendants’ tying-related claims, as much as it might struggle to make sense of them under prevailing economic theory, the court nevertheless must defer to the Supreme Court’s binding precedent and permit defendants to proceed,” the judge write.

Reports say that precedent was established in Eastman Kodak v. Image Technical Services, decided in 1992.

Full content: The Recorder

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