The XSi Data Center Blog:

It’s nothing new these days, but Oracle has been involved in yet another court battle.  This time, the Redwood City, California based Oracle was in Europe trying to prevent a German company from reselling Oracle software licenses.

After more than a week of deliberations, the jury in Oracle v. Google finally came back with a verdict over patent infringement on Wednesday.  Oracle claimed Googles Android tramples on its intellectual property rights to the Java programming language, but the jury disagreed and ruled that Google has not infringed Oracle Corps patents, putting an indefinite hold on Oracles quest for damages in a fight between the two Silicon Valley giants over smartphone technology.  But this is all a distraction from the real disaster at the heart of the company.

In what seems to be a battle to the end, Oracle and HP are going to trial in the Itanium lawsuit at the end of this month.  Both sides attempted to convince Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge, James Kleinberg, to hand them a win before trial. But Kleinberg denied those motions in a tentative ruling on Tuesday, May 1st.  He urged both sides to “give serious consideration to settlement,” and called the case, “extremely challenging,” adding that he did not know how it would turn out.  Oracle lawyer Dan Wall said at a court hearing that a settlement “isn’t going to happen.”

Upon reviewing Hewlett-Packard’s financials, it’s easy to see why the company turned around and sued Oracle last year after the database vendor decided to pull support for HP’s Itanium systems.

Oracles shares fell as much as 13% as Oracle reported it missed its 2Q earnings and losing $20 Billion of Market Cap and Sun sales were off by 10%.

Oracle Corp. and Oracle America Inc. have agreed to pay $199.5 million plus interest for failing to meet their contractual obligations to the General Services Administration (GSA), the Justice Department announced.

Our 4 Solutions to Maintaining Your Oracle Sun Servers Blog indicated that after the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle implemented Anti-Competitive practices (or at least created overwhelming obstacles and confusion) around how to obtain Solaris Updates & Patches outside of a full-site contract with Oracle.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article earlier this quarter indicating big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization’s effect on the U.S. Economy.