Stefan Mileschin

Oracle has widened its war against third-party software support providers it claims are violating its intellectual property.

Last week, Larry Ellison set his legal hounds onto StratisCom, a Georgia company that offers customers support for Oracle's Solaris OS. Oracle claims that StratisCom had "misappropriated and distributed copyright, proprietary software code, along with the login credentials necessary to download this code from Oracle's password-protected websites."

Oracle said in its complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that StratisCom had taken, or facilitated the taking of software patches and updates for Oracle's proprietary Sun Solaris and 'Solaris Updates. Once StratisCom distributed a copy of the entire Solaris operating system itself, Oracle moaned.

StratisCom was a subcontractor hired by DLT Federal, which Oracle sued in 2012 on similar grounds. DLT hired StratisCom to work on a number of US government accounts, including the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command and the Food and Drug Administration.

DLT gave customers a phone number to call in requests for support, which was answered by StratisCom workers.

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