Oracle Corp said it would continue to support Hewlett-Packard Co's Itanium-based servers after it lost a bitter lawsuit in which it had argued that it was not obliged to make new versions of database software compatible with the servers.

Santa Clara Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg wrote on August 1, that a contract exists between HP and Oracle, and that Oracle is required to continue to offer its product suite on HP's servers based on Intel Corp's Itanium chips.

Oracle had argued that there had been no such contract and that it had made the decision as Itanium was approaching the end of its life.

Oracle software on HP's Itanium computers will be released on about the same time as Oracle software on IBM's Power systems, Oracle said in a statement.

The case in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Santa Clara is Hewlett-Packard Company v. Oracle Corporation, No. 11-CV-203163.

(Reporting by Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)