SAP denies liability in TomorrowNow suit

Court filings in the ongoing Oracle SAP lawsuit revealed while the German software company admits some of the charges, it has denied liability and requested a jury trial.

SAP has responded to Oracle’s most recent complaint in the ongoing TomorrowNow lawsuit by admitting certain suspected activities but denying legal liability.

In documents filed late last week with the US court hearing the Oracle lawsuit, SAP revealed it had foreseen the possibility of legal action from its main competitor once it bought the now defunct, third-party Oracle support company in 2005.

It also said statements used as evidence in Oracle’s case, attributed to SAP staff and documentation, were factually correct. But it strongly contested that they proved any illegal activities took place and has requested trial by jury as a result.

The protracted legal battle, which will enter its second year of litigation in 2009 and has a trial date of February 2010, centres on Oracle’s allegations that SAP used its purchase of TomorrowNow to carry out “corporate theft…on the grandest scale,” according to the original complaint.

But, having already admitted to discovering some “inappropriate downloads” on the part of TomorrowNow employees, the German software maker last week strongly rebutted any suggestion it had intentionally infringed on Oracle’s intellectual property for competitive gain.

Last week’s filing also included details of an automated downloading tool called ‘Titan,’ which SAP said TomorrowNow used to retrieve material from Oracle’s support website, sometimes on a 24-hour basis.

But “this case (once parsed of Plaintiffs’ rhetoric) is simply about whether TomorrowNow exceeded its rights to access Plaintiffs’ computers, whether that harmed Plaintiffs, and, if so, by how much,” SAP stated.

Only last month, SAP appealed to the court to limit the liability of the suit.

But this most recent filing spells out its objections in detail to Oracle’s charges of illegal, unauthorised use of its software and support materials, copyright infringement, interference with economic advantage, violations of the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and breach of contract.

The court partially dismissed part of Oracle’s third amended complaint in response last month, striking the copyright claims for Oracle subsidiary, JD Edwards and a corporate entity called Oracle Systems Corporation. But it allowed Oracle’s claims of unjust enrichment, breach of contract and copyright infringement for a number of separate Oracle entities to stand.

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