Oracle adds charges in amended complaint against SAP
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Oracle added federal copyright infringement and breach of contract claims on top of its original charges.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP AG has asked a U.S. court to order settlement talks in its legal battle with Oracle Corp., arguing that Oracle exaggerated its claims against the German software maker. Oracle said it opposed such talks and accused SAP of trying to "make this case go away." In court papers Tuesday, SAP picked several holes in Oracle's lawsuit,Â which was filed in March against SAP and its TomorrowNow Inc. subsidiary. The suit charged the companies with posing as Oracle customers and illegally downloading customer support materials from an Oracle Web site. Oracle's version of what happened is "dramatic but inaccurate," SAP argued in a joint filing submitted ahead of a case management conference scheduled for Sept. 4. It said Oracle ignored several factors in its complaint, including thatÂ TomorrowNow was entitled to access the Oracle Web site because it was doing work for Oracle customers, and that none of the material was downloaded by SAP itself. "This case, in short, is about whether TomorrowNow exceeded its customers' rights in downloading certain materials. That is not a matter of 'corporate theft on a grand scale,' as Oracle says in its complaint, but a matter of contract interpretation," SAP wrote. It asked the court to order the two sides into an "alternative dispute resolution" process, which would seek to settle the case outside the courtroom. It wants the process to begin in a few months, mediated by a magistrate judge, and for discovery -- the process of gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses -- to continue in the meantime. "As with most cases, prompt resolution of this case is in the best interests of all concerned," SAP said. Oracle was against the idea, however. It said SAP has given no evidence that it never received the documents downloaded by TomorrowNow. What's more, the downloads that Oracle has uncovered so far may be only the "tip of the iceberg." Settlement talks would be premature until Oracle has determined the extent of SAP's illegal conduct, Oracle said. SAP has "one obvious goal: to make this case go away without meaningful discovery into what it really did," the company said. The positions are laid out in documents filed ahead of a case management conference scheduled for Sept. 4. Oracle portrays the case as highly complex and requiring lengthy discovery, including depositions from dozens of customers. It is seeking a trial date in September 2009. SAP says the scope of the case should be narrower and that it is unnecessary to interview so many customers. It wants a trial date of February 2009 or earlier. The issues are likely to be discussed further at the case management conference on Sept. 4, and the court will issue an order with its decisions after that, SAP said. SAP posted a copy of the joint filing on its Web site. Â
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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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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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InfoWorld - SAP AG has asked a U.S. court to order settlement talks in its legal battle with Oracle Corp., arguing that Oracle exaggerated its claims against the German software maker. Oracle said it opposed such talks and accused SAP of trying to &quot;make this case go away.&quot;
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A U.S. judge has sent Oracle's lawsuit against SAP and its TomorrowNow subsidiary to mediation.
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle Tuesday announced plans to extend the capability of its system management software to offer monitoring and management for SAP AG applications through a partnership with Nimsoft. The company also unveiled Release 3 of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g and new plug-ins for the product that enable it to manage third-party software. Additionally, Senior Vice President Richard Sarwal made his debut as the executive in charge of stepping up efforts to promote the product as a management system for heterogenous environments. Oracle and Nimsoft are working jointly to integrate the NimBUS SAP R/3 plug-in with Oracle Enterprise Manager 10G so that customers can monitor and manage SAP applications. The plug-in should be available in the second quarter of 2007, according to Nimsoft. Through new plug-ins for BMC Remedy Service Desk and IBM WebSphere MQ versions 5.3 and 6.0 introduced Tuesday, Oracle also added performance monitoring of those third-party products in Oracle Enterprise Manager 10G. All of this is part of Oracle's plan to focus on making enterprise management one of its core product offerings not just for Oracle environments, but across IT systems with products from multiple vendors, said Oracle president Charles Phillips on a conference call Tuesday. "We've undersold this product," he said of Oracle's system management suite. Phillips acknowledged that in the past, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10G has primarily been useful for managing environments that run Oracle software and has been sold along with more popular Oracle products such as its database and applications. However, now that it can support more third-party products, such as JBoss Application Server and IBM WebSphere Application Server along with those unveiled Tuesday, it is a more viable option to compete with rivals such as IBM's Tivoli suite and Hewlett-Packard's OpenView suite. "We were narrowly focused in the past," Phillips said. "Now we have become more complete and more open." To promote this new attitude toward enterprise management, Oracle now has a dedicated sales force paid to sell only Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, and the company also is training its database and application-server sales representatives so that they can push the product in the marketplace, he said. During the conference call, Sarwal pointed to Oracle's expertise across multiple software infrastructure products, such as database, application server, and business applications, as a strength the company has to offer comprehensive systems management. "We have a unique view of how to manage all of that stack," he said. In addition to its new plug-ins, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10G Release 3 also includes enhanced provisioning capabilities across Oracle's various application offerings and the ability to bring to the surface business metrics from Oracle applications to perform business diagnostics, Sarwal said. Oracle Enterprise Manager 10G Release 3 is available on Linux and Windows. Business customers can evaluate the product for free by downloading it from Oracle's Web site. The new plug-ins also are available now for use only with Release 3.
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Oracle Tuesday announced plans to extend the capability of its system management software to offer monitoring and management for SAP AG applications through a partnership with Nimsoft.
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The world-leading business software group, Germany&#39;s SAP, on Tuesday rejected accusations by its US rival Oracle that it had stolen software, but admitted &quot;some inappropriate downloads.&quot;
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SAP admitted on Tuesday its  TomorrowNow unit had carried out some &quot;inappropriate downloads&quot;  of documents belonging to Oracle but said SAP had not had  access to that material.
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LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) -- PeopleSoft&#39;s revision this week to its customer rebate program has brought it much closer to meeting Oracle&#39;s concerns that the measure represents an unacceptable obstacle to its bid for its rival, a judge reportedly said Friday.
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Company announces an extension of its customer assurance program, a contract clause offered to firms concerned about Oracle's hostile takeover bid.
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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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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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Violations aplenty, alleges database giant Oracle has amended its theft lawsuit against SAP to include claims of infringed copyrights and breached contracts.â¦
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SAP admitted on Tuesday its TomorrowNow unit had carried out some "inappropriate downloads" of documents belonging to Oracle but said SAP had not had access to that material.
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O.J. Simpson and three co-defendents face additional charges in the alleged hotel room armed robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers, according to a copy of an amended criminal complaint obtained by The Associated Press.