Oracle Sued For Patent Infringement by Norsync


On Thursday, Norsync Technology AS filed a complaint in the Northern District of Ohio against Oracle Corporation claiming that the defendant infringed the patent-in-suit through its data integrator by purportedly using the method described in the patent.

The patent-in-suit is United States Patent No. 7,502, 791 (the ’791 patent), entitled, “Database Constraint Enforcer.” Specifically, Norsync alleged that Oracle infringed at least claim 4 of the ’791 patent, which covers a “(m)ethod for enforcing a set of constraints that governs the integrity of information stored in a database system, the constraints being stored in a conceptual rules module in the form of rules for prescribing permitted states and transitions that the database can undertake…” Oracle purportedly infringed this patented claim because it “commercializes, inter alia, methods that perform all the steps recited in at least” claim 4 of the patent-in-suit.

In particular, Oracle’s allegedly infringing solutions and products, including the Oracle Fusion Middleware system(the Accused Product), which, according to the complaint, “enables a method for enforcing a set of constraints that governs the integrity of information stored in a database system…” Furthermore, according to the claim chart, the “Oracle Data Integrator uses declarative data integrity rules defined in its centralized metadata repository. These rules are applied to application data to guarantee the integrity and consistency of enterprise information.” The plaintiff claimed that the accused product “automatically retrieves existing rules defined at the data level (such as database constraints by a reverse engineering process” and the data flow is checked against the defined rules, allowing “correct data…(to) be integrated into the target datastore while incorrect data is automatically moved into error tables.” Additionally, Norsync proffered that the accused product uses “declarative rules implemented as joins, filters and constraints”; and the “constraint ensures the validity of the data in a given data set.”

Oracle is accused of direct and contributory infringement, in addition to inducing infringement. The plaintiff claimed that Oracle did not obtain permission or a license to use the patented method. As a result, Norsync stated that it has been harmed by the aforementioned conduct. The plaintiff has sought for Oracle to be adjudged to have infringed the patent-in-suit, an award for damages, an accounting of all infringing sales and damages, to restrain and enjoin the defendant from further infringement, and other relief. Norsync is represented by Sand, Sebolt & Wernow Co., LPA.