Along with a few other companies, Rimini Street caters to customers with stable ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) systems, like those sold by Oracle. Rimini Street claims its services, which may enable customers to forgo upgrades on their ERP implementations, can save customers at least 50 percent off their current support bills.

Oracle sued Rimini Street last year, claiming it has an illegal business model that repeats one used by former SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow. Oracle won a US$1.3 billion judgment in a related lawsuit, but the award by a judge. Rimini Street has denied any wrongdoing in the case, which has seen scores of the company's customers subpoenaed.

Now Rimini Street customer Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman is refusing to turn over documents sought by a subpoena unless Oracle agrees to pay the $1,500 in compensation for time its staff spent collecting them, according to documents Oracle filed Aug. 26 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Oracle served a subpoena on the law firm in February and since then held meetings for five months in an attempt to resolve "what should have been a straightforward issue," the filing states.

Non-parties to lawsuits are protected from subpoena-related costs only when they are "undue" or "significant," neither of which applies here, Oracle's filing argues.