Oracle's Ellison Seeks Showdown With SAP
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Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison is girding for a showdown with business applications software leader SAP AG and becoming more friendly with frequent rival IBM Corp. as his software company seeks higher profits from its recently completed takeover of PeopleSoft Inc.
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InfoWorld - Although the threat of Oracle&#8217;s hostile takeover continues to cast a shadow over it, PeopleSoft is pressing on with plans to integrate into its product mix the enterprise applications it picked up last year in its acquisition of J.D. Edwards.
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Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who last week won a federal judge&#39;s support for his US$7.7 billion bid for PeopleSoft Inc, now needs to woo PeopleSoft customers to complete his plan to boost sales.
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle went down to the wire in filing its first amended complaint against applications rival SAP Friday in a bitter wrangle over the alleged theft of trade secrets. Under aÂ legal stipulation agreed in mid-May, Oracle had until June 1 to file an amended complaint, while SAP must now respond to Oracle's amended complaint by July 2. Oracle added federal copyright infringement and breach of contract claims on top ofÂ its original charges, which included violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and of California's Computer Data Access and Fraud Act along with unfair competition and intentional and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage. Oracle filed the original lawsuit on March 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against SAP, its SAP America division, its TomorrowNow subsidiary, and 50 unnamed individuals Oracle claimed were SAP employees. In both the original and the amended complaints, Oracle charged SAP with committing "corporate theft on a grand scale," alleging that one or more staff at TomorrowNow pretended to be Oracle customers andÂ illegally hacked into its secure support Web siteÂ for users of Oracle's PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications and downloaded a vast amount of material. TomorrowNow provides third-party maintenance and support largely to customers using software Oracle acquired through its purchases of PeopleSoft and Siebel. Oracle further alleged that SAP then copied the content it had accessed from the Oracle site and used it to offer Oracle customers cut-rate support services as the first step in eventually persuading the users to migrate over to SAP's rival applications. In a statement Friday, SAP noted the "repeated delays" in Oracle filing its amended complaint. "Oracle now apparently has registered some copyrights, so it adds a copyright claim," SAP said. "And, it adds a breach of contract claim based on previously stated allegations. SAP plans to respond to the amended complaint by July 2, in accordance with the Court's schedule. At that time, SAP will set the record straight regarding Oracle's allegations. We are eager to vigorously defend this case." Oracle said it had discovered the illegal access to its Customer Connection user support Web site after noting periods of unusually heavy download activity from the site in late November and December 2006. "The downloads spanned every library in the Customer Connection support Web site," the vendor said in the complaint. Using one customer's credentials, those of Honeywell International, SAP allegedly downloaded almost 1,800 items per day for four days straight versus that customer's normal download pattern of 20 items a month. Oracle alleged that it has connected many of those downloads to a specific TomorrowNow employee Wade Walden, who previously worked at PeopleSoft. Each customer searching on the Customer Connection Web site has to click on a button after each search to indicate if the search result helped solve their particular problem. Oracle compiled that data on a regular basis to see how well the system is performing and that's how the vendor noticed sudden spikes in the number of clicks on that button, thousands of clicks per customer and each response occurred in a matter of seconds. "Given the extreme speed at which the activity occurred, these clicks could not reflect real responses from any human customers actually reading the solutions they had accessed," the complaint stated. Instead, Oracle believes an automated process was used to access the materials on the site "with lightning speed." Oracle claims to have found more than 10,000 unauthorized downloads of its software and support materials, which it then traced to an IP address in Bryan, Texas, an SAP America branch office location and the headquarters of TomorrowNow. Oracle adds that the IP address is connected directly to SAP's computer network. "Indeed, Oracle's server logs have recorded access through this same IP address by computers labeled with SAP identifiers using SAP IP addresses," the complaint stated. Oracle listed customers whose identities TomorrowNow had allegedly purloined, including Bear, Stearns & Co., Border Foods, Interbrew UK, Merck, and OCE-Technologies. SAP employees allegedly used bizarre user names including xx, ss, User, and NULL along with fake e-mail addresses, including test@testyomama.com, and fake phone numbers like 123-456-7897, Oracle alleged in the complaint. "All of these customers whose IDs SAP appropriated had one critical fact in common: they were, or were just about to become, new customers of SAP TN [TomorrowNow] -- SAP AG's and SAP America's software support subsidiary whose sole purpose is to compete with Oracle," the complaint stated. Oracle claimed the downloads occurred between September 2006 and January 2007. The complaint added, "Oracle also has concerns that SAP may have enhanced or improved its own software application offerings using information gleaned from Oracle's illegally copied software and support materials." Oracle said in the complaint that it's still unaware of the identities of the unnamed 50 SAP employees charged in the lawsuit. After discovery takes place in the lawsuit, Oracle hopes to unmask them and will amend its complaint accordingly. In the amended complaint, Oracle stated that its software and support materials are registered with the Copyright Office and thus protected under the Federal Copyright Act. The vendor goes on to say that it has now obtained over 40 certificates of registration from the Register of Copyright covering the materials allegedly stolen by SAP. Oracle listed the certificates in the amended complaint; most of the materials were registered on April 26, 2007. Oracle wants the judge in the case to stop SAP's alleged "illegal intrusions and theft," prevent the vendor from using the materials it's alleged to have obtained and to recover damages and attorneys' fees. The case was originally assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Maxine M. Chesney in San Francisco, but she recused herself in early May for reasons that were not disclosed. U.S. District Court Judge Martin J. Jenkins, also in San Francisco, is now presiding over the case. The amended complaint isÂ on Oracle's Web site.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Blog: SAP said it plans to formally respond by midnight (PST) Monday to Oracle's lawsuit, which claims SAP's wholly owned subsidiary TomorrowNow accessed Oracle's proprietary support and maintenance information beyond contractually allowed levels.
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Oracle is now OracleSoft, and that means SAP will soon have some real competition on its hands. Oracle&#39;s recent monster user conference, the first that united its technology, database and
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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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Oracle's lawsuit against rival SAP will move finally to trial on February 9, 2009 -- almost two years after the suit was initially filed, SAP said Tuesday.
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Oracle Corp can close the gap with SAP, the world&#39;s biggest software company, after buying US rival PeopleSoft, Oracle&#39;s Chairman Jeff Henley said in an interview published on Wednesday.
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LARRY ELLISON, the chief executive of Oracle, has raised his offer to buy PeopleSoft by more than $1 billion, marking what could be the final salvo in a 17-month bidding war.
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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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German business software giant SAP  is starting to see the silver lining in a potential linkup between rivals Oracle  and PeopleSoft , the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported.
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SAP, the world's leading maker of business software, unveiled a program to woo customers of its rival PeopleSoft wary about future technical and maintenance support for PeopleSoft products now that the company has been taken over by Oracle.
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Sure, the PeopleSoft board told shareholders to just say no. This battle will go down to the wire, and even afterward Ellison could prevail.
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By Tony Glover, The Business, London  Sep. 17--German-based business software giant SAP is about to face fierce  competition from aggressive Indian software developer Tally.
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Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, testifying in a Delaware court as part of Oracle's efforts to get PeopleSoft to pull back anti-takeover measures, denied that his company is trying to kill off its smaller software rival.
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Oracle has opened a new front in its 17-month battle to take over PeopleSoft, announcing a slate of nominees to challenge the rival software companyâs existing board of directors at its annual meeting next year.