Back on Oct. 28, German enterprise application maker SAP
admitted
in a court document that it took corporate responsibility for copyright infringement
involving its marketplace rival, Oracle—three and a half years after Oracle
first brought the lawsuit.
On Nov. 15, two weeks after the damages stage of the lawsuit started, SAP
officially apologized in court for its actions—deeds that were carried out by a
now-defunct service provider acquired in 2005, TomorrowNow, but were done with
the complicity of high-up SAP executives.
From the witness stand in federal district court in Oakland,
Calif., SAP
co-CEO Bill McDermott apologized to the court
and Oracle for its copyright infringement.
"They [TomorrowNow] were doing things that required much closer scrutiny,
and we didn't do that," McDermott said. "I am sorry for that."
Two years after it was acquired by SAP in
2005, TomorrowNow was caught stealing Oracle's intellectual property by gaining
unauthorized access to a customer-support Oracle Website and downloading
copyrighted instances of support software and thousands of pages of
documentation.
In the original litigation, Oracle claimed that more than 8 million instances
of its enterprise support software worth $2.15 billion were stolen, stored on SAP's
servers and used without its permission.
It also charged that SAP/TomorrowNow
deployed automated bots that used Oracle's own software to lure customers with
software installations from PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel Systems
(all now owned by Oracle) over to SAP.
Enterprise support software, which
is what TomorrowNow illegally downloaded, amounts to about half of
Oracle's annual revenue.
Actions didn't result in much new business, however
Ironically, TomorrowNow's strategy didn't result in much new business for SAP,
McDermott told the court.
"TomorrowNow was not a big driver of software sales," he told the
court. "It was not a very good business idea."
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, following
persistent questioning by SAP lawyers from
Jones Day, admitted
on Nov. 8 that only about 350 Oracle customers were lured away to SAP
as a result of TomorrowNow's illegal actions.
Nonetheless, Ellison testified that Oracle actually estimates that the
copyright infringement has cost Oracle upward of $4 billion, although he
admitted in court that he does not have documentation to prove that he and his
staff discussed this figure.
However, the next day, Paul Meyer, Oracle's damages expert, told
the court that SAP should pay Oracle $1.66 billion. Thus, it is unclear
even among Oracle's team exactly what fine should be assessed for the damages.
The case is being tried before U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton and
an eight-person jury.
Oracle originally said it wanted $2.15 billion in restitution; SAP believes a
figure in the neighborhood of $40 million is fair. SAP already has paid $120
million to cover court costs incurred by Oracle.
 |
IT & Network Infrastructure News & Reviews 
