Beijing Jiahua Chuangxin Technology Co., Ltd, a designated distributor of Oracle (ORCL) China, has filed a lawsuit against Oracle China, accusing the company of adopting dual standards in intellectual property rights protection in China.

Oracle reportedly issued two letters of authorization to BJCTCL in December 2005 and March 2006, respectively, designating the latter as a distributor for two of its projects. According to the evidence provided by a man in the complaint surnamed Yu, a manager of BJCTCL, the letter of authorization issued in November 2005 was about a bidding project for PetroChina Zhuozhou Dongfang Company. Yu said that Oracle identified and told BJCTCL in the letter that PetroChina Zhuozhou Dongfang Company won the bid with 8i beta database, a database which had long been stopped for use, and issued a piracy announcement to BJCTCL later and appointed it as the distributor of the project. However, PetroChina Zhuozhou Dongfang Company was not asked to terminate the bidding contract and its bidding was still accepted by Oracle in April 2006. In June 2006, BJCTCL and Oracle Singapore again found that PetroChina Zhuozhou Dongfang Company's GEOEAST project infringed on Oracle's IPR.

Yu believes that Oracle should have asked PetroChina Zhuozhou Dongfang Company to stop its obvious infringement by either offering it a punishment or terminating the bidding contract with it. However, Oracle did neither. Yu says that Oracle's attitude and behavior does no good to its IPR protection in the long term and this can even trigger IPR infringement to a certain degree. What's more, he says that Oracle was sending a wrong message to the entire world by doing so.

Though BJCTCL says Oracle's behavior has brought a loss to it, it does not ask for any compensation. It says it only hopes that Oracle can continue fulfilling the letters of authorization and assisting it in cracking down on piracy and maintaining Oracle's own credit and reputation.

So far, Oracle China has not made any comment on the lawsuit.

The case will be heard at Beijing Haidian District Court on May 23.