Oracle sues rival SAP over alleged document theft

By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service

March 23, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - Redwood Shores-based Oracle Corp. accused its largest competitor, SAP AG of Germany, in federal court in San Francisco Wednesday of stealing thousands of copyrighted documents from its customer support Web site.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court charges, "This case is about corporate theft on a grand scale."

Oracle is the world's second largest business software company and SAP is the largest.

The lawsuit alleges that employees of an SAP subsidiary, TomorrowNow of Bryan, Texas, used the log-in credentials of customers with expired or soon-to-expire contracts with Oracle to gain access to unauthorized materials.

The access was unauthorized because customers had agreed to use the materials only for their own purposes and not to give them to anyone else, the lawsuit said. In some cases, the allegedly phony log-ins obtained documents not included in the customers' contracts, according to the lawsuit.

The purpose of the alleged "high-tech raids" was to enable SAP to offer cut-rate support to customers that switched their business to SAP, the lawsuit contends.

The suit alleges, "As a result of this illegal activity, SAP apparently has now warehoused an extensive library of Oracle's proprietary, copyrighted software and support materials."

The lawsuit contends the alleged downloading violates the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a similar California law and the state's unfair business practices act.

It seeks an injunction against SAP, return of the allegedly stolen materials, restitution of SAP's alleged illegal profits and punitive financial damages.

SAP spokesman Steve Bauer said, "At this stage, until we can go through the lawsuit in much more detail, we're not going to have a comment."

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