Oracle makes its case to EU

Jake Widman
Saturday, 12 December 2009 01:35

IT Policy - Regulation

Lawyers for Oracle emerged from the first day of hearings before the European Commission "pretty damn confident" that the company would satisfy the commission's concerns about Oracle's purchase of Sun. The EC is investigating whether it would be anticompetitive for the database giant to gain control of Sun's MySQL.

The investigation grew out of the pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle. U.S. officials signed off on the deal in August, but last month the EU filed an objection, noting that "Oracle databases and Sun's MySQL compete directly in many sectors of the database market and that MySQL is widely expected to represent a greater competitive constraint as it becomes increasingly functional."

Oracle CEO has said that his company is losing US$100 million a month while waiting for the EC to make up its mind. Some have speculated that the EC's delay is a form of protectionism, aimed a benefiting European companies at the expense of an American one.

 Earlier this week, it was reported that Oracle has agreed to create a separate entity to manage MySQL. That report was denied by Oracle.

Now the company is presenting testimony to the EC in closed-door hearings. Oracle has claimed that the EC selectively quoted from surveys of database users to give a distorted view of the effect the MySQL acquisition would have.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Oracle's legal filings include statements from European companies that they do not see a problem with the acquisition. And an Oracle lawyer told Bloomberg News that some customers testified that the merger would actually benefit them.

"There is a mountain of consistent evidence favoring every one of our key propositions," said the lawyer, Thomas Vinje. "If we're successful on any one of them, the case must go away."