Dive Brief:

• Hewlett-Packard enterprise Co. won a $3 billion judgment Thursday against Oracle in a longstanding dispute over software for HP's Itanium servers.

• A California jury issued the judgment after a judge ruled in 2012 that Oracle had violated a contract with HP by stopping database software development for the servers.

• Oracle says it will appeal both the 2012 decision and the damages award.

Dive Insight:

It's taken four years and two trials, but jury has lowered the hammer on Oracle in the long dispute. Oracle dropped support for HPE's Itanium systems in 2011, which HPE claimed was a breach of a 2010 contract and an attempt to drive sales to Oracle's Sun servers. Oracle said the Itanium microprocessor was near the end of its commercial life and that it thus was entitled to end support.

A judge agreed with HPE in 2012 and Oracle resumed supporting the systems, but it's taken this long and a jury ruling to finish the award stage of the trial. The $3 billion was the full amount HP had sought, and Oracle promises an appeal.

"HP is gratified by the jury's verdict, which affirms what HP has always known and the evidence overwhelmingly showed," John Schultz, executive vice president and general counsel of HP Enterprise, told Reuters.

"Oracle never believed it had a contract to continue to port our software to Itanium indefinitely and we do not believe so today; nevertheless, Oracle has been providing all its latest software for the Itanium systems since the original ruling while HP and Intel stopped developing systems years ago," Dorian Daley, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary for Oracle, said in a statement Thursday. "Further, it is very clear that any contractual obligations were reciprocal and HP breached its own obligations."