Oracle's largest independent support alternative, and the most litigated. The record with each finding attributed, and the contract terms that decide your outcome.
Rimini Street is the largest independent support provider for Oracle software and the only one you can diligence from public filings. It is also the company Oracle has litigated against since 2010, which is why buyers ask about it more than they ask about the alternatives.
Both of the stories you will be told are incomplete. Oracle's account team describes an unlawful business and the provider describes a settled one. The rulings say something narrower and more useful than either.
This guide sets out the company, the court record with each finding attributed, what it means for a customer rather than for the defendant, and the diligence pack to run before you sign. It is not legal advice.
Rimini Street is an independent enterprise software support provider founded in 2005 by Seth Ravin, listed on Nasdaq under the ticker RMNI. It sells annual support on Oracle and SAP software that the customer already owns, positioned against the vendor's own maintenance fee.
Because it is publicly listed, it files audited financial statements and litigation disclosure with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. You can read the risk factors instead of asking a salesperson for them.
No independent provider can give you Oracle Critical Patch Updates, certified upgrades or access to My Oracle Support. Those are Oracle intellectual property and Oracle services, and they end with your Oracle support contract.
That is a constraint of the model, not a shortcoming of the vendor. Judge Rimini against the other independents on the things a provider can control, and judge the model itself against Oracle separately.
Two separate cases across fifteen years, and neither side summarizes them fairly. The short version is that the courts have policed how Rimini built and delivered updates, and have not held that buying support from someone other than Oracle is unlawful.
Every finding below is attributed to the ruling it comes from. Read the rulings before relying on any characterization of them, including this one, and take your own counsel. Nothing here is legal advice.
Oracle sued Rimini Street and Seth Ravin in 2010. In 2015 a Nevada jury found that Rimini had infringed Oracle copyrights in the course of providing support, and characterized that infringement as innocent rather than willful.
The detail that matters to a buyer is what the jury did not find. It made no finding that independent support is unlawful, and it made no finding against any Rimini customer. The district court record is available through CourtListener.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the infringement findings in substance and reversed parts of the award. Its reasoning turned on how development environments were created and where fixes were built, not on whether a support market may exist.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously for Rimini Street in 2019 on one narrow question: whether the phrase full costs in the Copyright Act allowed an award beyond the categories listed in the general costs statutes. It held that it did not.
This is the most misdescribed document in the whole dispute. The opinion is short, and reading it takes less time than arguing about it.
Rimini sought a declaration that its revised process did not infringe. The district court instead found infringement in a number of respects and entered a permanent injunction in 2023 constraining specific practices.
That injunction is the part with real operational consequences for customers, because an injunction against a provider practice can change what the provider is able to deliver. It is a service continuity question, not a liability question.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed parts of that decision, reversed others and vacated portions of the injunction, remanding for further work. The opinion issued in December 2024 supersedes older summaries, including most of what is still circulating in sales material on both sides.
The record at a glance
| Stage | What was decided | What it means for a customer |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 complaint | Oracle sues the provider and its chief executive | Customers are not parties |
| 2015 jury verdict | Infringement found, characterized as innocent | Practice was policed, model was not outlawed |
| 2018 Ninth Circuit | Affirmed in substance, award reduced | Confirms the issue is how fixes are built |
| 2019 Supreme Court | Recoverable costs under the Copyright Act | No bearing on legality either way |
| 2023 injunction | Specific practices permanently constrained | Scope of service can change. Read your contract |
| December 2024 appeal | Affirmed in part, reversed in part, injunction partly vacated | Current statement. Older summaries are stale |
Far less legal exposure than the account team implies, and more operational exposure than the provider implies. The risk you are actually carrying is that the scope of what you buy can be narrowed by an order you are not party to.
In fifteen years of litigation Oracle has pursued the provider, not the buyers. That is a meaningful signal about where Oracle believes its claims lie, and it is the single most useful fact to put in front of a nervous board.
Ask for defense and indemnity covering intellectual property claims arising from the provider's own delivery methods, uncapped or capped well above the contract value. Then ask what has actually been paid out under it.
A provider confident in its process will discuss this. In the transitions we have benchmarked, the spread in indemnity language between providers moved more risk than the spread in price did.
On breadth and public transparency, favorably. On depth in a single product line, a specialist often beats it. The right answer is decided by your exact module and version list, not by revenue.
The independent Oracle support field
| Provider | Founded | Base | Where it is strongest | Public filer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rimini Street | 2005 | Las Vegas | Breadth across Oracle and SAP, scale, references | Yes |
| Spinnaker Support | 2008 | Denver | Managed services alongside support | No |
| Support Revolution | 2012 | Reading, United Kingdom | European estates, strong on JD Edwards | No |
| Product specialists | Various | Various | One family, often staffed by former Oracle engineers | No |
Score on five dimensions before you look at the rate: coverage of your exact versions, regulatory jurisdictions, security model, indemnity language, and references running the same platform. The full method sits in the third party support comparison reference.
From two places that are real and two that are usually double counted. Getting this straight matters, because an inflated business case is the most common reason a support program is cancelled halfway through.
Corrected five year model on a 10 million dollar Oracle support baseline
| Line | Year 1 | Year 3 | Year 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle path at 4 percent uplift | 10.0m | 10.8m | 11.7m |
| Provider fee, fixed | 5.0m | 5.0m | 5.0m |
| Internal engineering added | 0.5m | 0.5m | 0.5m |
| Annual gross difference | 4.5m | 5.3m | 6.2m |
| Saving against the Oracle path | 45 percent | 49 percent | 53 percent |
A saving cannot exceed the baseline it is measured against. Any model showing more than 10 million of annual saving on a 10 million baseline has stacked licensing decisions on top of the support decision and called the total one number.
The defensible headline is that the recurring saving grows from roughly 45 percent in year one toward the mid fifties by year five, because the Oracle line keeps rising while the provider line does not. That is a strong enough number to survive a finance review, which the larger one will not.
The full arithmetic, including the contract mechanics that reduce it further on a partial move, is set out on our Oracle third party support economics page.
Seven, and they decide more than the rate does. Negotiate all seven before you discuss price, because a discount cannot buy any of them back later.
Build a clause grid before signing, with a named owner and a named risk against each line. Review it at every annual renewal, because provider scope moves and your grid is the only place that records what you were promised.
You lose the informal channel, not the legal position. Oracle no longer sees your estate through the support portal, and any comfort you were relying on from an account team conversation stops being available.
On audit frequency, treat vendor and provider claims with equal caution. In our own engagement file, third party support customers reported audit contact sooner than the general estate, but the sample is not large enough to publish a rate and neither is anyone else's.
Plan the switch as a ten year stay, not a trial. The reinstatement price is what makes the saving durable, and it is also what makes a change of mind expensive.
Twelve months, working backwards from your Oracle notice deadline rather than from the renewal date. The notice deadline is the only immovable object in the plan.
The common advice is to treat the litigation as the deciding factor, in either direction. Oracle's team says the record makes the provider unsafe and the provider says the record vindicates it. Both are using a fifteen year docket as a sales aid.
The reversal is that the litigation is a diligence input, not a decision input. It tells you which questions to ask about delivery method and indemnity. It tells you nothing about whether your particular estate should leave Oracle support.
In roughly 20 of the 35 transitions Fredrik Filipsson benchmarked across 2024 and 2025, the buyers who struggled had chosen on rate and litigation headlines rather than on scope schedules and exit terms. The contract was always the thing that decided how the next five years went.
Primary sources: Rimini Street Oracle support page, Oracle Software Technical Support Policies.
Source: Redress Compliance advisory engagement file, 2024 to 2025.
Nine steps, in this order. The first four cost nothing and frequently settle the question before a provider is ever shortlisted.
For provider neutral background, read the Oracle knowledge hub, the Oracle advisory practice, the Oracle ULA exit strategy resources, and the Vendor Shield subscription.
Buying support from an independent provider for software you already licensed is a lawful business model, and no court in this line of cases has held otherwise. What the litigation tested was how the provider built and delivered updates. This page is not legal advice, and the detail is on our legal position page.
The Supreme Court ruled for Rimini Street in 2019 on a narrow question about which litigation costs are recoverable under the Copyright Act. It did not rule on whether independent support is lawful. Treat any summary that says otherwise as sales material.
Oracle's litigation in this line of cases has been against the provider and its chief executive, not against customers. No remedy in either case has been directed at a customer. That is the most useful fact to give a board that is nervous about the headlines.
Independent providers anchor at roughly half of your current Oracle support fee, which itself sits at 22 percent of net license fees a year. The saving grows over time because the Oracle line carries an annual uplift and the provider fee is usually fixed for the term.
No provider can. Oracle Critical Patch Updates are Oracle intellectual property and stop on your termination date. Providers substitute compensating controls such as virtual patching, hardening, segmentation and monitoring, which your security team must accept in writing before you sign.
It constrained specific provider practices, and parts of it were vacated on appeal in December 2024. The practical consequence for a buyer is that scope can move, so confirm what is covered for your exact products and releases in writing rather than relying on marketing material.
Oracle's published technical support policies price reinstatement at 150 percent, applied to your last annual fee for a short lapse and to the fees across the lapsed period once it runs beyond twelve months. Model that number before you switch, not after.
Redress runs these transitions buyer side, covering the business case, the provider score, the seven clauses, the entitlement position, audit defense and the twelve month calendar. We do not resell third party support and we take no provider fees.
Redress runs Oracle third party support transitions inside the Vendor Shield subscription, the Renewal Program, the Benchmark Program, and the Software Spend Assessment. Every engagement is led by a former Oracle commercial executive on the buyer side.
Read the related benchmarking, about us, locations, and contact pages.
The buyer side moves that keep your Oracle estate honest at renewal.
Independent. Buyer side. Built for Oracle customers running the next renewal cycle.
Open the white paper in your browser. Corporate email only.
Open the Paper →The third party support cut is a permanent decision. The reinstatement clause makes the return prohibitively expensive. The buyer side response is to plan the cut as a ten year stay with the audit defense and the license position in place from day one.
We have run 500+ enterprise clients across 11 publishers. Every engagement starts with one conversation.
Third party support cuts, reinstatement math, the seven clauses, the partition policy review, and the audit defense posture across every Oracle engagement we run.
