SAP Agrees To Pay Oracle $306 Million In Corporate Theft Case

angry tapir writes "SAP has agreed to pay Oracle US$306 million in connection with the corporate-theft case that Oracle filed against it and a former SAP subsidiary in 2007, according to a filing made Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The long-running legal dispute centers on illegal downloads of Oracle software and support materials by SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow, which offered lower-cost support services for Oracle software. SAP admitted liability for actions taken by TomorrowNow workers, and a jury awarded Oracle US$1.3 billion in damages in November 2010." The $1.3 billion fine was overturned shortly after, causing more months of litigation.

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[Grishnakh]

Why? I'd rather see more trials, because this would funnel tons of money out of SAP's and Oracle's corporate coffers and into the pockets of lawyers. Not that I care much for lawyers, but as horrible and despicable as they are, they're still better than Oracle and SAP. And anything that would lessen the power of these two software giants is a good thing in my book.

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[jd2112]

Larry still needs to build his secret lair and buy a Persian cat.

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[HornWumpus]

You believe the Ferallon islands are a marine sanctuary? It's been much easier to keep Larry supplied sense the tunnel was completed.

Wrong headline

[Anonymous Coward]

SAP Agrees To Pay Oracle $306 Million In Corporate Copying Case

There fixed that for you. This is Slashdot, where everybody knows that COPYING is NOT stealing.

Re:Wrong headline

[pegasustonans]

Ever been to a flea market, and you see a guy selling piles of DVDs he burned on his computer?

In this case, that guy was a major enterprise software vendor and he was charging Fortune 500 companies millions for the privilege. Possibly the stupidest copyright infringement cases of all time. WTF were they thinking?

But in the end, you are correct, and slashdot will still defend this.

I won't defend an asshat for trying to build a business off copyright infringement, but I sure as hell won't equivocate copyright infringement with stealing either.

I've had laptops stolen from me, and I've had people copy my homework without my permission. I'd never mistake these two things as similar.

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[Hognoxious]

I've had laptops stolen from me, and I've had people copy my homework without my permission. I'd never mistake these two things as similar.

One of those is a self-punishing offense. Sort of like bigamy.

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[kestasjk]

I've had laptops stolen from me, and I've had people copy my homework without my permission. I'd never mistake these two things as similar.

• They're both unpleasant for the victim
• They're both illegal (assuming the homework is copyright to make a better analogy)
• They both give the perpetrator something for no work which another had to work for (which disincentives working for things)
• They both leave the victim with less value (the value lost from the laptop, and the value that is presumably lost in your homework if more people have the same homework)

Theft is defined (by Google define:) as "the action or crime of stealing", where stealing is defin

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[RabidReindeer]

sez uncle Larry...

Aren't they just going to have to turn around and give it to Google?

Anyone posting under me

[stigamet]

...is stealing my creative content.

I didn't know DeVry offered JD courses

[Hognoxious]

Damages. Fine. Not the same thing.

What this really means...

[erp_consultant]

TomorrowNow was guilty of downloading copy written materials from Oracle's corporate website without permission and got caught. It was always a very much arms length relationship with SAP. Back when PeopleSoft was an independent company it was one of the leaders in the ERP market, along with Oracle and SAP. When PeopleSoft got swallowed up by Oracle (and Siebel not long after) SAP saw an opportunity to woo PeopleSoft customers away from Oracle. So they bought up TomorrowNow, which at the time was supplying third party support for PeopleSoft customers, in the hope that TN could bring some customers SAP's way. But SAP more or less left TN alone to do their business and was unaware of the wrongdoing that was going on. Now that Oracle has won this case they have their sights on Rimini Street, another third party support provider. What these companies do is provide support for enterprise software products at basically 1/2 the price that Oracle charges. Typical support prices are 17% of the purchase price yearly. So if you dropped a million on an ERP system (not at all uncommon) you could be looking at 170K per year in support costs. A lot of customers feel that is an outrageous amount so they go shopping for alternatives. Oracle wants to end third party support full stop because it's a major cash cow for them and they will use the courts to do it. There is already a pending case against Rimini Street and I suspect that Oracle's strategy will be to sue them out of existence. Personally I'm pulling for Rimini on this one. I think it's good that customers have alternatives. Well, that and Larry is an asshole.

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[erp_consultant]

My understanding is that TN's defense was that they were downloading material from Oracle's website on behalf of their (TN's) client. If the customer were an Oracle customer then it's all well and good for that customer to log on to Oracle's support site and download whatever they want. It's part of the agreement you have with them. But in this case the support was being provided by TN. So what TN was alleged to have done was log in as the customer and download copy written materials from Oracle's web site

ebay to the rescue

[lordfoul]

$306 Million... That's a Lot of LEGOs!