A dispute between two of the world's biggest business software companies has escalated, with Oracle accusing SAP executives of knowing about a subsidiary's alleged downloading of five terabytes of Oracle software and documentation.
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.
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