Oracle Damages in SAP Case Could Top $1 Bln

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 corporatetheft and alleges it illegally downloaded masses of Oracle customerservice materials and passed those documents to SAP.

"Because defendants have not provided Oracle with criticalinformation relevant to liability and resulting damages, Oracle doesnot yet know its damages with precision," Oracle said in a filing thisweek to the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, California.

"But, even so, it appears Oracle’s damages are, at a minimum, wellinto the several hundreds of millions of dollars and likely are atleast a billion dollars."

SAP replied in the joint discovery statement: "Oracle speculateswildly about the amount of its damages ‘claim’ in this discoveryreport, even though more than a year after this case was filed, Oraclestill refuses to identify with any precision the nature or amount ofits alleged harm or even to provide the theory on which its damageclaim is based."

SAP has admitted employees of TomorrowNow, which specializes incustomer support for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards software,inappropriately downloaded some Oracle materials.

SAP bought TomorrowNow in 2005 after Oracle bought PeopleSoft, whichin turn had acquired JD Edwards — hoping to exploit uncertainty amongPeopleSoft and JD Edwards customers as to how Oracle would support them.

Germany-based SAP is the world’s leading maker of softwareapplications to help large businesses automate and manage functionsranging from human resources to supply chains.

Oracle, the world’s biggest database company, has spent billions onacquisitions over the last few years to challenge SAP’s leadership inthat area.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by David Holmes)