News

Oracle calls HP's lawsuit against Hurd 'vindictive'

The move threatens the two companies' relationship

By Nancy Gohring

September 7, 2010 07:42 PM ET

IDG News Service - Oracle called Hewlett-Packard's lawsuit against its former CEO "vindictive" and said it threatened the companies' close relationship.

The lawsuit followed Mark Hurd's resignation from HP last month and Oracle's announcement on Monday that it had hired Hurd as one of its co-presidents. HP said Hurd's employment at Oracle violated the terms of his severance agreement with HP and raised confidentiality issues.

"Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement. "By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace."

Hurd resigned from HP in early August following a charge of sexual harassment by a contractor and alleged improprieties with expense reports. He walked away with a severance payment of $12.2 million plus hundreds of thousands of shares of HP stock, worth an additional tens of millions of dollars.

"Despite being paid millions of dollars in cash, stock and stock options in exchange for Hurd's agreements to protect HP's trade secrets .... HP is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Hurd has put HP's most valuable trade secrets and confidential information in peril," HP alleged in its lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a Santa Clara, California, court.

According to the suit, Hurd agreed to notify HP within a year of his departure whether he plans to take a job with a competitor and offer HP enough details about the job to determine if it would lead to a violation of the confidentiality agreement. Hurd didn't do so prior to Oracle's Monday announcement, HP says.

HP is asking the court to prevent Hurd from taking the job.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

HP update

More HP news, features...

Comments ()

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER

Forrester Consulting - Optimizing Users and Applications in a Mobile World

Solving application issues over the WAN requires careful consideration. Based on their independent research, Forrester Consulting offers recommendations on how to tackle application performance issues, insufficient bandwidth and the inability to quickly restore users in a disaster.

Read now.

WHITE PAPER

Enter the Security KnowledgeVault

Security is not an option. This KnowledgeVault Series offers professional advice how to be proactive in the fight against cybercrimes and multi-layered security threats; how to adopt a holistic approach to protecting and managing data; and how to hire a qualified security assessor. Make security your Number 1 priority.

Read now.

WHITE PAPER

Cut Communications Costs Once and for All

New IP-based communications systems are being deployed by small and midsized businesses at a rapid rate. Learn how these organizations are enabling faster responsiveness, creating better customer experiences, speeding office or mobile interactions, and dramatically reducing existing communications costs.

Read now.

Top Stories

Free Insider Guide

Excel 2010 Cheat Sheet: Register for this Computerworld Insider Cheat Sheet and gain access to hundreds of premium content articles, guides, product reviews and more.

IT in Government White Papers

Virtualizing Government Infrastructure: All server virtualization solutions are not created equal. The more-with-less agenda for government agencies is tailor-made for server virtualization, which is evolving into...
Overcome Top 7 Admin Challenges of Active Directory: As Active Directory's role in the enterprise has drastically increased, so has the need to secure the data. Gain insight on creating repeatable,...
Insiders Can Ruin Your Company. Take Action.: Did you know that 80 percent of threats to an organization come from the inside? The threat from insiders is often overlooked in...
Top Solutions and Tools to Prevent Devastating Malware: Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring...
Streamline Compliance and Increase ROI: Streamline, simplify, and automate compliance related activities; especially those that impact multiple business units. This white paper from NetIQ, outlines solutions that will...

IT in Government Webcasts

Optimizing Networks for the Cloud: Join guest speaker, Rohit Mehra, IDC Director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, to explore current trends, discuss best practices for optimizing Data Center and...
Apps QuickStart Series Part 2: Designing and Deploying SQL Server on VMware vSphere: Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as...
Apps QuickStart Series Part 1: Designing and Deploying Exchange 2010 on VMware vSphere: Download this webcast to learn the virtual hardware design considerations for Exchange 2010, deployment using the building block approach, options for high-availability and...
Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware: Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn...
Virtualize Business-Critical Applications with Confidence: Virtualizing business-critical applications has become a key focus for organizations as they move along their virtualization journey. With the launch of VMware vSphere®...