providing customer support
Rimini could have managed to provide support services legally however they would have had to set up contracts with each customer which allowed Rimini techs access to my each clients My_Oracle_Support Page and remote admin access to database instances. this would then have let them download updates and patches plus use the Oracle knowledge base on that customers behalf. Of course that would have necessitated frequent logging in and out of different portal accounts many times a day and resources downloaded for one customer would need to be quarantined in a way they were not visible when working on another customer account.
All of this is do-able and may be what other 3rd party support companies do but its a lot more expensive that just downloading the contents of the oracle knowledge base and copies of all active products and sticking them in a file share. Maybe if they had spent the £ 5million building the right infratrcuture they wouldn't be in this pickle now. There would have been a risk that Oracle would then have changed licencing rules to prevent 3rd party staff accessing my_oracle_support but I can't see how that would have stood up in court.
AC because I manage a lot of Oracle projects.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
