SCOTUS agrees to hear copyright fight between Oracle and Rimini
The US Supreme Court yesterday said that it will hear a longstanding copyright dispute between technology company Oracle and software business Rimini Street.
This comes after Rimini filed a writ of certiorari in August, asking whether the Copyright Act—which gives courts discretion to award prevailing parties their full costs—authorises recovery of the full range of litigation costs or only those that are taxable.
The dispute started in 2010, when Oracle accused Rimini of copyright infringement for downloading Oracle database support materials without a licence.
In January 2018, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld an earlier judgement that Rimini infringed 96 of Oracle’s copyright, awarding Oracle taxable and non-taxable damages and costs.
In its opposition to Rimini’s petition, Oracle claimed that it had non-taxable costs in excess of $17 million “and that is why the district court exercised its discretion to award Oracle 75% of these costs”. The company added that the Ninth Circuit made it clear that “full costs” meant “full costs”.
According to Oracle, the only result of granting certiorari would be forcing the company to spend even more resources defending its case of copyright infringement against Rimini.
At the time of Rimini’s filing, Oracle said that the Supreme Court should deny the petition.
Following the announcement that the court granted the certiorari, Oracle said that the petition is limited to a “narrow issue” regarding an award of more than $12 million in litigation costs.
The company said that although the dispute is headed to the Supreme Court, Rimini’s underlying conduct is not in question.
“We look forward to addressing this costs issue in our nation’s highest court, and we believe that the court should reject the attempt by Rimini Street—a dishonest, serial infringer—to avoid fully compensating Oracle for Rimini’s misconduct,” said Dorian Daley, executive vice president and general counsel at Oracle.
Rimini said yesterday in a statement that it is pleased that the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case.
“No amount of bluster and attempted media spin by Oracle can obfuscate the facts that the jury found Rimini Street’s past infringement was ‘innocent’ and not intentional, that Oracle lost 11 of 12 claims against the company, that Oracle lost all claims against Rimini Street’s CEO, and that Oracle has already been ordered by the US Court of Appeals to refund $21.5 million of amounts previously paid by Rimini Street in 2016,” said the company.
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