Perry maintained that the trial judge wrongly held that Oracle’s licensees are not “owners” of a copy of a computer program, thereby precluding Rimini from invoking the Section 117(a) defense to Oracle’s infringement claims.
“This should have been in the case all along,” Perry said. “It should have made all the difference. Ten years of litigation and hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees would have been avoided had the district court applied the statute Congress wrote for this particular circumstance.”
The dispute dates back to 2010 when Oracle sued Rimini, seeking to stop its competitor from copying its software, which Rimini argued it needed to serve clients. Despite Rimini changing its practices in 2014, the claims went to trial in 2015, and a jury found Rimini’s former practices infringed Oracle’s copyright. The trial judge barred Rimini from continuing to infringe Oracle’s software in 2018, and after subsequent appeals, the Ninth Circuit mostly affirmed the judge’s conclusion.
