Oracle Expands Charges Against SAP in Lawsuit

BOSTON (Reuters) – Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) amended its lawsuitagainst SAP AG (SAPG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) on Monday, saying SAP executive boardmembers were warned that its TomorrowNow unit was engaged incorporate theft before SAP bought TomorrowNow.

Oracle sued the German software maker in March 2007,accusing its TomorrowNow software maintenance services businessof illegally using customer log-ins to steal copyrightedmaterials from Oracle’s website. Oracle said last month thedamages it seeks from SAP could top $1 billion.

In an amended court filing that cited internal SAPdocuments, Oracle said four SAP board members, includingcurrent co-chief executive Henning Kagermann, received aconfidential document on January 7, 2005, that "made clearTomorrowNow did not operate legally."

It is the first time that Oracle has charged that topexecutives at rival SAP had knowledge of the corporate theftcarried out by TomorrowNow — both before and after the companywas acquired by SAP on Jan 19, 2005.

"SAP unlawfully accessed, copied and wrongfully usedOracle’s enterprise software applications and software andsupport materials. It did so with the knowledge and consent ofthe SAP AG executive board of directors," Oracle said in thecomplaint filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

SAP spokesman Saswato Das said his company would respond tothe allegations in a legal filing that is due by September 11.

"Our filing is the most appropriate place to respond toOracle’s allegations," Das said. "Ultimately it is the courtthat will determine the facts and the remedies in this case andwe prefer to conduct the discussion through the legal system."

"INAPPROPRIATE"

He said that Kagermann was not immediately available forcomment. SAP is scheduled to release quarterly results onTuesday.

SAP said last week that it would shut down TomorrowNowafter an unsuccessful bid to sell the company.

The German company had disclosed in July 2007 thatemployees of the Texas-based TomorrowNow had made "someinappropriate downloads" of materials from Oracle’s website.

SAP had said that employees of the parent company did nothave access to Oracle’s intellectual property.

But Redwood City, California-based Oracle, in its amendedcomplaint which cited court depositions and internal SAPdocuments, charged that employees of TomorrowNow and its parentcompany accessed each other’s computer systems and sharedcontent via e-mail.

Oracle claimed that one of those systems, SAPnet, allowedemployees of the parent to assist in "illegal developmentefforts" by TomorrowNow.

"At the time Oracle filed its lawsuit, SAP had before it adetailed road map for connecting virtually every piece of theSAP (TomorrowNow) network to the SAP AG network," Oracle said.

TomorrowNow provides technical support for customers usingPeopleSoft and JD Edwards software. SAP bought the company in2005 after Oracle bought PeopleSoft, which in turn had acquiredJD Edwards, aiming to persuade PeopleSoft and JD Edwardscustomers to switch over to SAP’s software.

SAP, the world’s biggest maker of software that helpscompanies manages business processes from accounting tomanufacturing, said it is working directly with more than 225TomorrowNow customers to shut down its operations by October31.

(Editing by Brian Moss)