HP and Oracle have extended their legal clash to Europe, now that authorities are investigating accusations by the former claiming that the software giant is using discriminatory practices on licensing and support for Intel-based offerings.

“The competition authority said it opened a probe to examine Hewlett-Packard’s July complaint that Oracle’s refusal to support Intel’s Itanium systems would be an abuse of dominant position, and that its license pricing was “decided unilaterally.”

Hewlett-Packard described “a generalized eviction strategy by Oracle, reinforced, according to it, by a deceitful ad campaign against HP Integrity servers,” the regulator said in a decision published on its website today.”

The heat between Hewlett-Packard and Oracle first erupted over Oracle’s withdrawal of services for Itanium, Intel’s blundering server chip line that has not received a lot of warmth from Silicon Valley after its overdue launch. Oracle’s refusal is based, for the most part, on a supposed secret agreement between HP and Intel concerning the continuation of the product. The courtroom battle has long since been extended to include other counts as well, most recently alleged fraud.

Oracle accused its rival of deceit by not informing it has hired Leo Apotheker as its CEO. Apotheker, who has been replaced by Meg Whiteman a few months ago, took the seat of yet another former chief exec – Mark Hurd. Larry Ellison hired Hurd as co-president of Oracle shortly after his scandalous departure from the hardware company. More recently, it hired former HP vice president of marketing and strategy less than week ago.

Today Hewlett-Packard made an executive appointment of its own, recovering its executive head count by some. Henry Gomez is now the company’s PR and communications chief, a former Ebay employee who’s reportedly also one of Whiteman’s closest personnel.