Oracle launched a trade secrets protection suit last year
against SAP and has just lodged further accusations with a federal
court in San Francisco. It claims that senior SAP executives knew
that a subsidiary company was taking its documentation and using it
in its own business to undercut Oracle.
Oracle and SAP are competitors in the market for large scale
business software systems, and SAP has for some time operated a
programme called 'Safe Passage', which was intended to make it
easier for customers to move from Oracle to SAP.
It was allegedly as part of that programme that the SAP
subsidiary, TomorrowNow, downloaded copies of software and millions
of documents to use in their own business, which was to support
Oracle products more cheaply than Oracle did.
"Oracle now amends its claims because discovery in this case has
revealed that the focus of its original claims - SAP's massive
illegal downloading of software and support materials from Oracle's
password-protected computer systems - is just one element of a
larger scheme by SAP to steal and misuse Oracle's intellectual
property," said Oracle's court-submitted document, according to
press reports.
"In addition to the illegal downloads, SAP - with the knowledge
of members of the SAP AG executive board of directors - made
thousands of copies of Oracle's underlying software application on
its computer systems," it said.
Oracle claims that the board of German company SAP were warned
that TomorrowNow operated illegally and continued with its
acquisition of the company. "SAP AG’s board ignored these warnings
and embraced TomorrowNow’s illegal business model," said its
suit.
The suit claims that the company continued with its purchase of
TomorrowNow and its rebranding of the company as SAP TN "knowing,
at the SAP AG executive board level, that SAP TN’s business model
depended on routine, daily cross-use of misappropriated Oracle
software applications and downloaded support products".
Oracle claims that it has discovered behaviour at SAP far worse
than it expected. "The focus of its original claims – SAP’s massive
illegal downloading of Software and Support Materials from Oracle’s
password-protected computer systems – is just one element of a
larger scheme by SAP to steal and misuse Oracle’s intellectual
property," said the complaint.
"In addition to the illegal downloads, SAP – with the knowledge
of members of the SAP AG executive board of directors – made
thousands of copies of Oracle’s underlying software applications on
its computer systems," it said.
Oracle claims that those copies of the software were then used
to service customers of its own, "generally to support a business
that was illegal to its core".
In 2007 SAP chief executive Henning Kagermann had claimed that a
'firewall' existed between SAP's and TomorrowNow's systems, but
Oracle's new claims says that that is not true.
SAP has said that it does not intend to conduct the case through
the press and that it will respond to the allegations through the
courts.
