SAP Ordered To Pay $1.3 Billion To Oracle

Posted by Soulskill on Monday November 29, 2010 @09:39AM from the take-a-check? dept.

bdcny7927 writes with news that a jury decided to award Oracle $1.3 billion in their lawsuit against SAP after deliberating for less than a day. "The verdict ... is the biggest ever for copyright infringement and the largest US jury award of 2010, according to Bloomberg data. The award is about equal to SAP’s forecasted net income for the fourth quarter, excluding some costs, according to the average estimate of analysts... SAP spokesman Bill Wohl said the German software maker will pursue all available options, including post-trial motions and will appeal if necessary."

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Re:Automated download? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-11-29 11:23 · Score: 5, Informative

Basically SAP was illegally distributing Oracles software. They were also copying Oracles patches and reworking them so they would work with the pirated oracle software. Think of it as somebody selling bootleg windows and also supplying bootleg patches.
SAP admitted to having done it. It was estimated that if they had been selling legal licenses and service contracts it would have been anywhere between 560 million and 3 billion, so 1.3 billion is a middle ground figure.
This is one fight where Oracle actually isn't being evil and was legitimately getting ripped off.