Oracle and SAP Talk Settlement on TomorrowNow Legal Fees

November 8, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The lawsuit between software giants Oracle and SAP got underway last week in Oakland, California, as expected, with new Hewlett-Packard CEO and former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker dodging his subpoena to testify, and new Infor and former Oracle co-president Charles Phillips taking the stand.

Early in the week, there were reports, which started at Reuters, that SAP had proposed shelling out $120 million to cover Oracle’s legal costs in the TomorrowNow lawsuit, in which Oracle has accused the former SAP unit of stealing its documentation and software patches for PeopleSoft, JDE, and Siebel software suites for its third-party support business and alleges now $2.3 billion in damages. SAP has admitted to wrongdoing, but thinks the damages to Oracle are utterly ridiculous for a company that had 358 customers using its support. The Reuters report echoed a rumor that Oracle had agreed as part of a tentative settlement to not seek punitive damages, trebling them because SAP willfully engaged in the illegal activities.

Phillips took the stand on Thursday last week at the trial, and in a report from the San Jose Mercury News said that if SAP had come to Oracle to license the software and docs that TomorrowNow took, it would have asked for a lot of money, and Bloomberg quoted Phillips as saying that $5 billion was the magic number.

The case resumes on Monday (today), with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison taking the stand. This ought to be good.

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