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SAP Ordered To Pay $1.3 Billion To Oracle
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."
$1.3 billion eh? By RIAA accounting standards that sounds to me like they may have copied 7, or maybe even 8 songs! Burn!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
So... an American jury finds in favor of an American company in an American court, and orders a foreign company to pay a huge sum after almost no deliberation at all.
Am I the only one reminded of how all-white juries always used to find in favor of the white victims, in courts staffed with all whites, after almost no deliberation at all, when the defendants were black? If it had been SAP suing Oracle, would the outcome have been the same, and would it have come as quickly?
...LAST WEEK when it was actually news.
I'm Peggy.
The big boys are duking it out, nice to see some damage instead of the grandmother downloading a music mp3 and having to pay 50,000$. This is more of what the patent trolls were meant for, not for the end user not making money off the file sharing with another individual.
One day a lynch mob will go to Oracle's HQ and burn the place down.. deservedly so. I'm just amazed at how fast a company can become the no.1 villain in the Computer industry..
Oracle please just go away already I'm sick of seeing you in the news all the time...
for all I know SAP could totally be in the right.
But I still love seeing them in pain.. after all the pain they've caused everyone else.
A legal battle between SAP and Oracle sounds like a (forgive me, Godwin) war between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union.
Whoever loses, they deserved it, and I hope no one wins.
Huge fail
did you forget to take your meds?
The article says SAP made "hundreds of thousands of illegal downloads and several thousand copies of Oracle's software to avoid paying licensing fees and steal customers."
Oracle was putting on a good show while SAP tried to counter with facts. Since a bored, clueless jury is a thankful audience, the showman wins...
SAP in fact tried buying Oracle off but I guess their offer wasn't high enough. The trial mainly existed to determine the size of the fine.
Congrats on being in a very elite 1%.
SAP already admitted that they knew about the piracy.
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/sap-goes-on-record-to-admit-software-piracy-10988
It really bugs me that there seem to be these stories, mostly about copyright-related lawsuits, where the OP assumes that everyone on Slashdot knows what the lawsuit was about. Well, I don't know what Oracle sued SAP for, and if I did I forgot. Who can keep these acronyms and company names straight anyway? If it were just once I wouldn't be bothered to RTFA but I shouldn't have to RTFA just to understand the summary of a story that normally I wouldn't care that much about. These things seem to come up once every couple of days though.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Grandmas that download a few songs. They were heavy pirates, it's just that they were prosecuted for a subset of songs. The heaviest pirates are targeted with lawsuits, it doesn't make sense to take random Grandmas to court. But I realize that the tech sites like Slashdot didn't report on that little tidbit and I will probably be voted down for mentioning it.
Damages should be based on the amount of profits Oracle lost and SAP gained from the customers who left Oracle due to the infringement, Bob Mittelstaedt, SAP’s attorney, told the jury.
Ummm...no. Damages should also be based on some sort of "punishment" factor. I would think it is important to prevent companies from simply writing off illegal activities and paying off some trivial amount of money in the even they get caught.
I wonder how a small firm like TomorrowNow with 400 service-contracts - and a net profit of ~50 mio. USD in the time frame in question - can make a such a damage.
A, maybe it's because Oracle bought the companies who made the software TomorrowNow was offering services for...
head.bang->desk();
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
The ridiculous fines the EU imposed on Microsoft a decade too late.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Does that average out to $699 per Linux user?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
One of my first managers was joking with us, and stated, "Only here, does some little guy like me have the opportunity to run a 10 million Deutsche Mark project aground!"
How do the SAP folks responsible feel about causing $1.3 billion in damages? Has anyone's head rolled for this?
I could only dream of being able to do this, "Oh, hi, boss . . . there's a little small matter that we need to talk about. I made a tiny boo boo, and it is going to cost the company $1.3 billion."
Yo.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Don't do business in or with the USA until they get there justice system sorted out and into the current century. It's just too dangerous and you will always loose to a patriotic non-professional jury that has no knowledge about law and no knowledge about the subject that provoked the lawsuit in the first place. Just look elsewhere for good customers. Asia comes to mind here. That will be where the money is being earned in 15 years from now anyway.
So... an American jury finds in favor of an American company in an American court, and orders a foreign company to pay a huge sum after almost no deliberation at all.
SAP abandoned - in August - any pretense of contesting Oracle's claims of copyright infringement. SAP Proposes Not to Contest Oracle's Copyright Claims
That implies as well that SAP had accepted the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal court.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- On the losing end of a $1.3 billion jury verdict for stealing a rival's intellectual property, SAP AG is facing the difficult decision about whether to double down -- by appealing -- or folding.
Either route is going to cost the German company dearly, and will have implications for how other technology companies approach copyrights.
A jury in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday found that SAP's behavior in plundering software and documents from archenemy Oracle Corp.'s secured websites was so egregious that it awarded Oracle nearly all of the damages it was seeking.
If SAP appeals, it will have to endure several more years of disastrous publicity, a jackpot for Oracle.
"I'm not sure what the grounds for an appeal are -- I'm not sure what the argument would be," said Patrick Walravens, an analyst with JMP Securities. "It's not like this was a trial that was done in a quick and dirty manner. It was three years and hundreds of millions in legal fees -- things were pretty well vetted."
The judge in the case still has to formally affirm the jury's verdict, and could reduce the award. An order could come sometime in the next week.
Many analysts suspect that SAP will stand down and try and figure out a way to pay one of the biggest software piracy penalties on record. Doing so would put the $10 million acquisition of the tiny, now-shuttered company called TomorrowNow that landed SAP in this mess that much farther in the rearview mirror. SAP at a crossroads after losing $1.3B verdict
Er, the Nazis lost that one. Was that your point?
+1 if you caught the reference.
Grandmas that download a few songs. They were heavy pirates, it's just that they were prosecuted for a subset of songs. The heaviest pirates are targeted with lawsuits, it doesn't make sense to take random Grandmas to court. But I realize that the tech sites like Slashdot didn't report on that little tidbit and I will probably be voted down for mentioning it.
Plenty of grandmas were sued, and this has been widely publicized, but they chose to settle. The difference between the people who went to court and those who did not was a willingness to settle, not the sympathy of the RIAA.
For reference, this award to Oracle is about the same as a jury would award based on the Thomas case if SAP had shared 100 gigabytes of music, which isn't much more than what the average college student shared on the network at my school.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
your lack of citations shows that you don't even believe this bull. Better find a new job, the RIAA won't pay much for such a poor level of toadying.
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/sap-admits-liability-in-oracle-software-piracy-case-009028.php
/. defense for anything related to copyright infringement, unless of course it is related to the GPL.
Can the obligatory
Lose and loose are different words.
Oh and SAP already admitted guilt, the jury was tasked with setting the award. Sorry if that puts a damper on your little USA bash.
You can download almost all of Oracle's software right from their website for personal or educational use. You are expected to have a license though if you use it to conduct any business transactions. I believe that they also have a 'lite' edition of their database in case you wanted to also try that out. From their website:
Software Downloads
Developers:
All software downloads are free, and most come with a Developer License that allows you to use full versions of the products at no charge while developing and prototyping your applications, or for strictly self-educational purposes. You can buy products with full-use licenses at any time from the online Store or from your sales representative.
Customers:
If you already have a commercial license you should download your software from our E-Delivery site, which is specifically designed for customer fulfillment. For patches, see My Oracle Support.
Best "String" Ever!
for sharing 572 tracks on the P2P network, including tracks by 50 Cent and Usher. After Crain denied engaging in file-sharing and rejected the RIAA's $4,500 prelitigation settlement offer, the RIAA filed suit. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/12/riaa-versus-grandma-part-ii-the-showdown-that-wasnt.ars
Sharing 572 tracks with the world != downloading a couple songs. Her name was tied to the Kazaa account as well.
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.
It was password protected. TomorrowNow had employees download PeopleSoft updates and patches under an Oracle support contract, and then illegally redistributed them to their customers.
These megacorps have billions in cash, a fine of 50 million might as well be a rounding error. Punitive damages against these companies should be relative to their annual profits. These types of rulings need to set a precedent, not just account for damages.
for Oracle. So you don't consider that a bad thing? Taking the work of others and profiting from it? This was a pretty egregious case, SAP has already admitted culpability and tried to settle with Oracle.
No I have just read through the cases and can see that they did not target p2p pirates at random. It makes sense to go after the heaviest p2p pirates first and that is what they did.
But I can provide links if you would like. Take the case of Tenenbaum who admitted to having 800 files in his shared Kazaa folder but was only prosecuted for 30. It's just a legal strategy to focus on a subset of files.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/tenenbaum-takes-the-stand-i-used-p2p-and-lied-about-it.ars
I don't work for the RIAA, I'm just intellectually honest. Sorry if that bothers you.
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/sap-admits-liability-in-oracle-software-piracy-case-009028.php
The Oracle hatred distortion field seems to be blocking out this pertinent fact. Is there a way to disable it for 24 hours?
Well, no. In wars, the young and innocent die and there was no victory in the loss of so many people in Europe. But SAP have for years been leaders in selling crap at a premium and calling it gold, more even than Oracle. Which is an amazing trick. They are bastards who have crippled many firms with their software and consulting fees, and they deserve every stick and stone. No one will die but maybe people will invest less in them.
Oracle Corp. won a $1.3 billion jury verdict against rival SAP AG, the world’s largest maker of business application software, for copyright infringement by a now-defunct software maintenance unit.
The jury yesterday awarded the damages after an 11-day trial in federal court in Oakland, California. Oracle sued SAP in 2007 claiming its U.S.-based unit made hundreds of thousands of illegal downloads and several thousand copies of Oracle’s software to avoid paying licensing fees and steal customers.
I hate SAP as much as anybody else, but I also hate Oracle (if Larry Ellison was standing here now, I'd kick him in the balls so hard, no backup would ever fix the resulting problem for him in this life time)
But saying that SAP paying 1.3 BILLION is fair?
‘Fair Number’
The panel looked at “the scope, the duration and the timing” of TomorrowNow’s conduct, the foreman said. The $1.3 billion, which was less than the $1.7 billion Oracle’s expert had recommended, took into account all the elements of damages to Oracle that had occurred, he said.
“We thought that was a fair number,” the foreman said.
“If you take something from someone and you use it, you have to pay,” Bangay, 57, an auto body technician, said.
- Oh, man, I hope for the sake of this guy, he never takes anything and just uses it without any payment upfront. No video, no song, no book, no other mechanic's tools.
You can't handle the truth.
This is a taste of what's to come for the Google / Java lawsuit. Bye bye Android.
there's no place like ~
Well since I can't remember seeing real troll behavior from you I'll assume you are really confused and explain: Support. Just like you can buy Windows 7 in everything from Starter to Ultimate with different features included, with Oracle you get different levels of support and downloads for different tiers. What SAP did was pretend to be Oracle customers and download ALL the features and extras for ALL the levels of support and then proceeded to undercut them on their own product. It would be like you going to Apple stores and setting up your "brand new Hackintosh RAZR1911 Edition" for sale. Needless to say that didn't go over well.
So I really don't see how SAP can bitch. They bought a company whose entire business plan was based on theft, admitted the company was stealing, and now they have to pay the price. You can't just let companies like this off on whatever the cost of the theft was, otherwise I could steal from you and if caught just give back the original while keeping the interest. the judgment has to be nasty to deter others who would do the same thing. But no matter what you think of Oracle they have the right to sell their software anyway they choose, and the company SAP bought stole patches and support that they had no right to and for a profit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You can download the full (but probably unpatched) Enterprise Edition of Oracle 11g.
At last, a nice summary. Now it would be interesting to know how could the SAP managers be so stupid to do or allow that.
Nice going, way to feed the troll.
How about foreign companies doing business in the USA not breaking the local laws? Maybe you should read up on the facts of the case. SAP admitted to copyright infringement and the case was just to determine damages.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
SAP will need to raise their fees.... wait, they are already too high.
Anyway Oracles security track record is absolutely breathtaking. I almost spat cheerios out my nose reading that last cert advisory.
No fair mentioning something funny and then keeping it to yourself. Link?
Advice: on VPS providers
And for a lot of money. You can look it up if you want. OTOH A lot of us remember the slap on the face MS got , from the US court, and if one want to call it a slap. And the other non story where nothing happened.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Oracle could have paid each juror $10 million and still had a massive ROI.
Larry Ellison winning anything is always bad news for humanity in toto.
Oracle initially took offense at TomorrowNow using manuals and patches downloaded legally on behalf of TomorrowNow clients. Oracle essentially said "You, as third-party support, cannot use the access purchased by your customer for your customer - they have to log in and download and then hand it off to the TomorrowNow engineers" Some of the customers contracting with TomorrowNow had lost their media and not patched for awhile, to catch up on patching they needed the media. Oracle charges rapacious prices to replace media, upwards of $32K! I'm betting TomorrowNow used legally downloaded media to support customers who no longer had access to support for Siebel just to be nice guys. It is possible to negotiate the price of replacement media with Oracle but it requires weeks of effort and the use of nasty language towards their 'customer service' reps. I still have psychological scarring from my go round and I 'won' a reduced cost.
'The longing to be primitive is a disease of culture' George Santayana
Of course if it was songs, books or movies there'd be a massive outcry that Oracle didn't actually lose anything as they still have all the same cars, I mean software, as they did before.
I thought the hive mind's view was that information wanted to be free...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Of course if it was songs, books or movies there'd be a massive outcry that Oracle didn't actually lose anything as they still have all the same cars, I mean software, as they did before.
I thought the hive mind's view was that information wanted to be free...
That's information created by ARTISTS, this was information created by ENGINEERS.
Actually, I think more to the point is that it wasn't like SAP was taking this material and posting it in free torrents. They were selling it.