Oracle is suing TomorrowNow, a U.S. subsidiary of SAP, for corporate theft and alleges it illegally downloaded masses of Oracle customer service materials and passed those documents to SAP.FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Damages sought by software maker Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) could top $1 billion in an intellectual property lawsuit it has brought against arch-rival SAP AG (SAPG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), according to a court filing.
Oracle is suing TomorrowNow, a U.S. subsidiary of SAP, for corporate
theft and alleges it illegally downloaded masses of Oracle customer
service materials and passed those documents to SAP.
"Because defendants have not provided Oracle with critical
information relevant to liability and resulting damages, Oracle does
not yet know its damages with precision," Oracle said in a filing this
week to the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, California.
"But, even so, it appears Oracle's damages are, at a minimum, well
into the several hundreds of millions of dollars and likely are at
least a billion dollars."
SAP replied in the joint discovery statement: "Oracle speculates
wildly about the amount of its damages 'claim' in this discovery
report, even though more than a year after this case was filed, Oracle
still refuses to identify with any precision the nature or amount of
its alleged harm or even to provide the theory on which its damage
claim is based."
SAP has admitted employees of TomorrowNow, which specializes in
customer support for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards software,
inappropriately downloaded some Oracle materials.
SAP bought TomorrowNow in 2005 after Oracle bought PeopleSoft, which
in turn had acquired JD Edwards -- hoping to exploit uncertainty among
PeopleSoft and JD Edwards customers as to how Oracle would support them.
Germany-based SAP is the world's leading maker of software
applications to help large businesses automate and manage functions
ranging from human resources to supply chains.
Oracle, the world's biggest database company, has spent billions on
acquisitions over the last few years to challenge SAP's leadership in
that area.
(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by David Holmes)
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