Oracle sued over UI tech in Fusion Applications

From InfoWorld: A Georgia company is suing Oracle for fraud and copyright infringement, saying the vendor is unlawfully using the company's technology to build user interfaces associated with Fusion Applications, a long-awaited, next-generation product family set for release next year.

MB Technologies of Warner Robins, Georgia, is the developer of Bindows, a toolkit that lets developers create "the exact look and feel" of a Windows user interface for their Web applications, according to the complaint.

The company entered a licensing agreement in 2004 with EPM (enterprise performance management) vendor Hyperion, according to the suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

After Oracle acquired Hyperion in 2007, MB asked for an addendum to the original agreement, the complaint states.

The companies met several times, and Oracle executives told MB the vendor intended to use the Bindows technology only in Hyperion products that existed at the time of the acquisition, it adds.

Oracle officials also said the company planned to replace Bindows entirely "in the near future," according to the complaint. Those pledges were used by Oracle to "induce" MB to agree to an addendum "at lower license pricing," it states.

But in October 2007, Oracle sent MB a draft of the addendum that included a section stating it would license Bindows "for use in Oracle Fusion products," something the companies had never actually discussed, and which would "necessarily have changed the pricing of the aforesaid license," according to the complaint.

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