Oracle officials have accused HP of secretly contacting Intel to keep making Itanium processors so that HP can maintain the appearance that the dead microprocessor is still alive.

Software maker Oracle made the allegations in a court filing in California's Superior Court on Friday. HP wanted to maintain the impression that the Itanium processor is still being produced to keep making money from its Itanium customer base and to take business away from Oracle's Sun servers. Oracle also added that Intel would have killed off the microprocessor based on its sales volume but because of Intel's secret pact with HP, the company had to make Itanium chips for two more technology generations. A public redacted version of the filing was made available to the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog.

HP and Oracle have been engaged in a legal battle over the Itanium chip. HP and Intel had developed the chip in the 1990s but few customers actually bought it mostly because Itanium needed different software than the widely used Intel x86 chips.

The relationship between Oracle and HP had started to sour when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in April 2009. Oracle then announced last March that it would stop supporting Itanium prompting HP to sue Oracle over the move. HP claims that the software company is contractually obligated to update products for Itanium.

In the court filing, Oracle says that HP knew that Intel had no future plans for Itanium. If customers knew about this decision they would transfer their business elsewhere.

"These factors led HP to craft a top-secret plan to create a false perception that Itanium still had a future," Oracle states in the document. "HP understands that the future prospects of IT products drive customer purchasing decisions. A buyer who knew that Intel saw no future for Itanium, and was only continuing to invest in the line pursuant to a contractual obligation, would devalue the future prospects of Itanium servers and be less inclined to buy."

HP has denied that there is a secret deal going on between the company and Intel. HP also says that Oracle's filing is a delaying tactic to "extend the paralyzing uncertainty in the marketplace."

"As Oracle well knows, HP and Intel have a contractual commitment to continue to sell mission-critical Itanium processers to our customers through the next two generations of microprocessors, thus ensuring the availability of Itanium through at least the end of the decade," an H-P spokesman said Friday.

"The fact remains that Oracle's decision to cut off support for Itanium was an illicit business strategy it conjured to try to force Itanium customers into buying Sun servers, and destroy choice in the marketplace," the H-P spokesman added.

Intel hasn't released a statement about the lawsuit.