Last year, Oracle, which competes with HP in the hardware market but shares many customers with the vendor, announced it would cease supporting Itanium.

HP filed suit in June 2011, maintaining that Oracle was contractually bound to continue supporting Itanium.

"This case causes the Court to revisit the centuries-old issues of whether a contract exists, and if so, what does it mean," Judge James Kleinberg wrote in his decision, filed Wednesday in Superior Court for the County of Santa Clara.

HP sued its former CEO Mark Hurd after he took a job as co-president of Oracle in September 2010, arguing he held trade secrets that could hurt HP competitively.

Oracle and HP quickly negotiated a settlement agreement, but since then the companies have sharply disagreed over whether some of the verbiage drafted in it amounted to a binding contract between Oracle and HP over continued Itanium support, leading to HP's June 2011 suit.