Oracle adds copyright charges to SAP complaint
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle Corp. has added new claims to its ongoing lawsuit against software rival SAP AG. Oracle added copyright and breach-of-contract claims to its list of allegations against the German software vendor in an amended complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. "This case is about corporate theft on a grand scale," Oracle's filings state. Oracle now alleges that SAP violated its copyright by illegally downloading software and support documents. The breach of contract claim alleges that SAP violated the terms of use of Oracle's Customer Connection support site. The amended complaint had been expected by May 18, but that deadline was pushed back. It is the latest in a series of legal maneuvers between the two companies, in their ongoing fight for dominance in the enterprise software market. SAP plans to respond to Oracle's complaint by July 2, the company said in a statement, released Friday. "At that time, SAP will set the record straight regarding Oracle's allegations. SAP is eager to vigorously defend this case," SAP said. The suit alleges that staff at SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary pretended to be Oracle customers in order to gain access to the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards customer support Web site. The lawsuit charges SAP, TomorrowNow, and 50 unnamed individuals with violating fraud laws and engaging in unfair competition and civil conspiracy. The lawsuit came out of the blue two days after Oracle had announced strong third-quarter financial results and claimed its business applications revenue was growing much faster than that of rival and market-share leader SAP. The two companies have long been bitter competitors although they also have customers in common, for instance those running SAP applications on Oracle's databases or middleware. Oracle said it had discovered the illegal access to Customer Connection after noting periods of unusually heavy download activity from the site in late November and December 2006. The vendor claims to have found more than 10,000 unauthorized downloads of its software and support materials, which it then traced to an IP (Internet Protocol) address in Bryan, Texas, an SAP America branch office location and the headquarters of TomorrowNow. Oracle listed customers whose identities TomorrowNow had allegedly purloined, including Honeywell International, Merck & Co. Inc. and OCE-Technologies BV. Since filing the original lawsuit, Oracle has not spoken publicly about the legal action. SAP's response has been to decline comment on the lawsuit other than to commit to aggressively defend itself and TomorrowNow against Oracle's claims. As SAP released its first-quarter fiscal results on April 20, the company's CEO Henning Kagermann was in defiant mood about the Oracle lawsuit. "We have no intention to settle; why should we?" he said. "We don't think anything is wrong in our company." Kagermann added that SAP planned to formally respond to Oracle's suit within "the next weeks." The lawsuit raises a number of issues about the viability of the third-party software maintenance market and common practices within that sector, such as how feasible it is for competitors to provide support for their rivals' offerings. Oracle is also a player in the market, providing support for SAP's older R/3 applications through a partnership with Systime Computers since May 2006. Some observers suggest that if TomorrowNow staff did download the content from Oracle's site, the issue might have had more to do with a lack of a clear policy from Oracle about which content customers and support specialists were entitled to access and what information was out of bounds. Â
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(InfoWorld) - SAP reacted quickly and angrily to statements made by Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison during his company's quarterly results meeting Tuesday. Ellison's statementsÂ about SAP's product and acquisition strategy are "a complete misrepresentation," said Bill Wohl, SAP's vice president of product and solutions public relations, in a statement. Oracle's CEO said his company's Fusion middleware is "years ahead" of SAP's rival NetWeaver product, and that "NetWeaver is still relatively new and still incomplete." He also said, "SAP has delayed the next release of its applications until 2010," and "They'll be two full years behind our Fusion release." Wohl said "Oracle's next-generation applications exist only in PowerPoint and won't be delivered until 2008 or beyond." He called Oracle statements about both its own products and SAP's "to be inconsistent and misleading." He said that Oracle made conflicting statements about Fusion's development. "In January, Oracle claimed they were halfway to Fusion and two weeks ago they said they wereÂ not even halfway doneÂ -- Oracle needs to adopt one version of the truth, and be honest with the market on its actual progress."
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Downloads of Oracle files by SAP subsidiary "unacceptable," CEO Kagerman declares. Justice Department also investigating.
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle will offer customers a range of simplified licensing models in an attempt to make pricing more consistent across its portfolio of products, developed in-house and acquired from competitors. Four basic licensing models will be available for all Oracle products, including J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel applications, Oracle said Tuesday. The Component Model offers customers simple a la carte pricing, while the Custom Application Suite Model allows them to create their own bundle of applications based on their specific business needs. The Enterprise Applications Model is based on enterprise metrics, such as revenue or number of employees, and offers unlimited application usage. For small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) with revenue of more than $100 million, Oracle offers a SMB Model, which provides addition partner support in tools and pricing. Customers can use either the new pricing models or previous licensing models when purchasing additional products from old price lists. Newly released products will be offered under the new pricing models.
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The company said a subsidiary had improperly obtained documents from its archrival Oracle but disputed the extent of the offense.
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Oracle's  search for a  smoking gun to prove the truth of its allegations that rival  SAP  stole its software is likely to be long and  arduous, making an out-of-court settlement attractive for both  parties.
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Company files new lawsuits against cybersquatters in the U.K. and the U.S., charging violation of intellectual property law.
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Responding to aÂ lawsuit filed by OracleÂ earlier this year, SAP admitted on Tuesday that its TomorrowNow division in the U.S. made some "inappropriate downloads" from an Oracle Web site but said SAP never had access to the material.
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Oracle details new charges, alleges SAP's TomorrowNow copied materials to the point of repeating errors from originals.
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Oracle and SAP faced off in a U.S. District Court hearing Tuesday over Oracle's allegations that its archrival pilfered some of its software and support materials.
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Software maker SAP admitted a  subsidiary had carried out "inappropriate downloads" of  documents belonging to archrival Oracle but said on Tuesday SAP  itself had not had access to that material.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP has christened itsÂ suite of hosted ERP softwareÂ for the midmarket SAP Business ByDesign and said it will be available initially in the U.S. and Germany, with the U.K., France and China to follow soon after. Pricing for the service in the U.S. starts at $149 per user per month for a minimum of 25 users, including services and support, SAP said. Customers also pay $54 per month for each group of five "efficiency users," or casual users who access the software only to fill out expense reports and purchase confirmations, for example. SAP CEO Henning Kagermann presented the first demonstration of the product, formerly known by its code name A1S, at an event in New York Wednesday morning, calling it "the most important announcement I have made in my career." SAP has said it will invest â¬300 million to â¬400 million (about $400 million to $550 million) by the end of 2008 to support the introduction of the service, including a consumer marketing campaign on the Web to alter the perception of SAP as a provider of software for big businesses. SAP Business ByDesign aims to offer the gamut of ERP (enterprise resource planning) capabilities in a service affordable and simple enough for use by businesses with 100 employees to 500 employees, Kagermann said. The capabilities include manufacturing, purchasing, accounting, sales and marketing and human resources. The software is live today at 20 customers in Germany and the U.S., including a small aircraft manufacturer, a manufacturer of air fresheners, a technology consulting company and a company that offers packaging and distribution services to pharmaceutical companies. It still wasn't entirely clear from SAP's statement when the average business will be able to sign up for the service, but a safe bet for most countries appears to be 2008. SAP is "currently engaging with pilot customers" in the U.S. and Germany and "validating" the product with customers in the U.K., France and China, it said in a statement. Next year it will offer the service in additional markets including Australia and India in the Asia-Pacific; Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordic region and Spain in Europe; Canada and Mexico in the Americas; and South Africa. Other countries will follow in 2009. The company has said it hopes to open a new market for ERP among companies that rely today on spreadsheets and other individual programs to run their businesses, and were put off ERP in the past by its price and complexity. Analysts say the challenge will be to offer a product that's easy for companies to configure but which meets the needs of their individual business.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP admitted on Tuesday that its TomorrowNow services subsidiary made some "inappropriate downloads" from an Oracle Web site but contended that SAP personnel did not access the material. SAP admitted the downloads in today's response to a March 22 lawsuit by Oracle that alleged TomorrowNow staff hacked into an Oracle support Web site and downloaded vast amounts of content, which was used to offer Oracle customers cut-rate support services. In an about-face from his previous position, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said in a statement that his company is open to a possible settlement with Oracle, which has charged SAP with "corporate theft on a grand scale." Rodney Masney, global director of IT infrastructure services at Owens-Illinois, a Toledo, Ohio-based maker of packaging materials and an SAP shop, said he doesn't expect that the lawsuit will damage SAP's business. "It's important for customers of SAP to know they are dealing with a highly ethical organization," he said. "Ultimately, I believe this will blow over." Masney, also president of the Americas' SAP User Group, said that Kagermann offered assurances during a telephone conversation today that a thorough investigation would continue and that "appropriate action" would be taken against employees involved in any theft of data. In addition, Masney said that Kagermann said that there is "an appropriate firewall [between TomorrowNow and SAP] and no information fell into the hands of SAP employees. There were perhaps some procedures not followed and that significantly increased the amount of data downloaded [by TomorrowNow employees]." In its response, SAP also said that it has appointed COO Mark White executive chairman of TomorrowNow, and pledged to enforce both existing procedures, create new policies, and implement special training programs for employees. Masney described White as a "very disciplined" executive. Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Nucleus Research in Wellesley, Mass., criticized SAP officials for a lack of oversight. "The apology and response is too little too late," she said. "SAP customers should be concerned, in general, about their welfare, given SAP management's apparent lack of oversight of its employees and lack of regard for intellectual property." David Mitchell, an analyst at London-based Ovum, said SAP must work hard to avoid damaging its reputation. "It is still likely that the case will continue through the legal process and that it may still have many months to run," he stated in a research note. "Irrespective of the legal conclusion to the case, a significant part of the impact for both Oracle and SAP will be related to how each manages the public relations impact." Oracle released an e-mail statement Tuesday, noting that "Kagermann has now admitted to the repeated and illegal downloading of Oracle's intellectual property. Oracle filed suit to discover the magnitude of the illegal downloads and fully understand how SAP used Oracle's intellectual property in its business. To the extent requested, Oracle will cooperate with the Department of Justice investigation of SAP announced by the company in its press release." (Dan Nystedt and China Martens of the IDG News Service contributed to this story.)
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Software maker SAP AG   admitted a subsidiary had carried out "inappropriate downloads"  of documents belonging to archrival Oracle Corp but said on  Tuesday SAP itself had not had access to that material.
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Company alleges patent infringement by rival disk maker GS Magicstor.
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(InfoWorld) - I2 Technologies accused SAP of patent infringement in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. A maker of SCM (supply chain management) software, i2 claims that SAP has infringed seven patents granted between 1998 and 2006. The alleged patent infringements, listed in the lawsuit that i2 filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, relate to SCM models and tools in areas such as managing factory planning systems, negotiating and tracking the sale of goods and allocating manufactured product to sellers. "We are currently looking into this," said SAP spokesman Frank Hartmann. "That's all we can say at the moment." In a statement, i2 said the lawsuit against SAP is "critical" for the Dallas CRM (customer relationship management) vendor to protect its patented innovations.
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A developer of peer-to-peer file-sharing software is taking record-company giants to court, charging them with unfair business practices including collusion and monopoly-building.