Tags : DoJ, EU, oracle
Justice Department Sides With Oracle On EC’s Anti-Trust Concerns
Washington, D.C. (AHN) – The U.S. Justice Department took the unusual step Tuesday of objecting to the European Commission balking at Oracle’s planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems.
The Commission on Monday issued a “statement of objections” about the merger. The body has been evaluating the acquisition since September over anti-trust concerns.
The EC is concerned that the deal will lock up Sun’s MySQL; an open source database software. MySQL is used by numerous companies, including Facebook and Google. Sun says the software is downloaded 60,000 times a day.
Open-source is non-proprietary and can be freely used, modified and distributed by anyone.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Molly Boast said that the Justice Department’s own investigation determined “the merger is unlikely to be anticompetitive.” Because several open-source products are available, Boast said Justice believed “that consumer harm is unlikely because customers would continue to have choices from a variety of well established and widely accepted database products.”
Oracle also protested the EC statement, saying in a statement that the decision “reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics.” Oracle said at least eight other companies offer open-source software, including IBM and Microsoft.
“Given the lack of any credible theory or evidence of competitive harm, we are confident we will ultimately obtain unconditional clearance of the transaction,” Oracle said.
Oracle could receive a hearing on the EC objection as early as late November. The EC is scheduled to issue a final ruling by Jan. 19. An EC veto could be appealed to the European Union courts.
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