Judge Nixes, Lowers Oracle's $1.3B Award Against SAP

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Judge Nixes, Lowers Oracle's $1.3B Award Against SAP

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 1, 2011 @08:48AM from the larry-will-still-be-ok dept.

itwbennett writes "Federal judge Phyllis Hamilton has overturned the $1.3 billion judgment Oracle won against SAP and has approved SAP's request that Oracle accept a lower award, which would negate the need for a new trial." Oracle is in the habit of asking for awards in the billions; with that model, they really can make it up on volume.

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Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by swordgeek · 2011-09-01 08:54 · Score: 1

After all, it certainly isn't on selling products!

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
1. Re:Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 09:07 · Score: 0
  
  After all, it certainly isn't on selling products!
  Hey, that was my line!
  Now pony up!
2. Re:Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 09:18 · Score: 0
  
  After all, it certainly isn't on selling products!
  Hey, that was my line!
  Now pony up!
  Actually it is from the support revenue generated selling their products.
3. Re:Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by Pete+Venkman · 2011-09-01 09:25 · Score: 1
  
  Do you think Apple makes their money off of iDevices?-- or Amazon makes their money off of Kindles?
4. Re:Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by vectorious · 2011-09-01 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  Respectively: Yes, Lots and No, but they make money of a captive content buying audience. I am not sure I understand the point here?
5. Re:Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by Pete+Venkman · 2011-09-01 12:10 · Score: 1
  
  This is my goddamn point
6. Re:Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 14:28 · Score: 0
  
  Well it sure as heck isn't from selling the product I work on... but that's OT.
  A quick perusal of the Oracle annual report shows your generalization is quite false. 75% of income is from software sales and software related services. 1.3B is a drop in the bucket compared to total annual revenue and that isn't net profit either - lawyers aint cheap.
7. Re:Well now we know where Oracle makes their money by swordgeek · 2011-09-01 15:27 · Score: 1
  
  Forget it man, I go there first.
  Hmm, in fact...
  FIRST POST!!!
  Dammit, I guess I've been around here long enough to see that become possible again.
  
  --
  
  "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
"asking for .. billions" by oGMo · 2011-09-01 08:56 · Score: 4, Funny

Oracle is in the habit of asking for awards in the billions
...and they've clearly carried the practice over to lawsuits...

--
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
1. Re:"asking for .. billions" by Riceballsan · 2011-09-01 09:16 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I wonder if their outrageous claims give them legal viability.
  "We want 100 billion dollars from them"
  Judge: No
  OK 50 billion
  No
  5 billion then
  No
  2 billion
  That dosn't sound like much, OK.
  Defendent: But they haven't even proven we have done anything wrong
  Judge: Well they aren't asking much lets just give it to them so they stop bugging us.
$272 million is still huge! by Ossifer · 2011-09-01 09:12 · Score: 2

I should think Oracle would be happy to take that and have case closed. Somehow I doubt actual damages were that high...
1. Re:$272 million is still huge! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2011-09-01 09:39 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  I should think Oracle would be happy to take that and have case closed. Somehow I doubt actual damages were that high...
  I doubt they were even close. But ellison comes across as the kind of guy determined to have the biggest swinging dick at the country club, so it probably isn't about what's fair but instead how hard he can beat on the competition.
  ORACLE - One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
  
  --
  When information is power, privacy is freedom.
2. Re:$272 million is still huge! by schwit1 · 2011-09-01 09:45 · Score: 1
  
  Ellison's philosophy is that for Oracle to win everyone else must lose. There is no win-win to him. If he sees any opportunity to kill, he will.
272 Million by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 09:15 · Score: 0

For those wondering...
1. Re:272 Million by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-02 07:41 · Score: 0
  
  Post link to it?
Corporapocalypse by billcopc · 2011-09-01 09:23 · Score: 1

When companies throw around billions of dollars on mere whims, that to me is proof that our financial model is obsolete. These corporations wield far too much power and influence and should be broken up.
Does the fact that Oracle is a 40 billion dollar company result in better products ? No. Ask any Oracle admin.
All it does it give them the power to bully everyone else around until there is nothing left. They gobbled up Sun. They chugged MySQL. They bought John Ashcroft (not that this was any challenge). To outsiders, Oracle is an example of everything that's wrong with America. They take and take, and they never give back.

--
-Billco, Fnarg.com
1. Re:Corporapocalypse by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 09:26 · Score: 0
  
  Right, because all those mom-and-pop enterprise server infrastructural shops were doing such a good job before the big corporations got into the picture.
2. Re:Corporapocalypse by Hognoxious · 2011-09-01 09:27 · Score: 2
  
  They take and take, and they never give back.
  Shame on you, sir, for that vile calumny!
  They've given a lot of money to yacht builders, and a yacht to Larry.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
3. Re:Corporapocalypse by St.Creed · 2011-09-01 09:33 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You mean shops like SUN, BEA, PeopleSoft, Hyperion and Siebel, to name a few of the bigger ones they gobbled up? GP isn't talking about mini-shops. Gobbling them up (or not) has no impact. We're talking about multibillion dollar mergers that leave little competition and huge barriers to entry for new companies.
  
  --
  Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
4. Re:Corporapocalypse by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 09:42 · Score: 0
  
  Well, mysql was a mom-and-pop enterprise server infrastructure brick, which worked quite well for what it cost, data integrity issues in the early versions notwithstanding.
5. Re:Corporapocalypse by amicusNYCL · 2011-09-01 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  That's great, the next time someone asks me what MySQL is I'm going to tell them it's an enterprise server infrastructure brick. That sounds like a term the buzzword generator would throw out.
  
  --
  "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
6. Re:Corporapocalypse by the+linux+geek · 2011-09-01 11:26 · Score: 1
  
  Being an SQL server that sometimes didn't even corrupt data isn't enough. How's MySQL scalability compared to Oracle, DB2, or Sybase?
7. Re:Corporapocalypse by CyprusBlue113 · 2011-09-01 11:36 · Score: 1
  
  Being an SQL server that sometimes didn't even corrupt data isn't enough. How's MySQL scalability compared to Oracle, DB2, or Sybase?
  A hell of a lot cheaper?
  
  --
  a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
8. Re:Corporapocalypse by jd2112 · 2011-09-01 12:07 · Score: 1
  
  They take and take, and they never give back.
  Shame on you, sir, for that vile calumny!
  They've given a lot of money to yacht builders, and a yacht to Larry.
  A yacht? Larry has a bigger fleet than some navies. Not to mention a fighter jet.
  
  --
  Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
9. Re:Corporapocalypse by Billly+Gates · 2011-09-01 13:57 · Score: 1
  
  As much as I hate lobbying and monopolies Oracle is right on with 40 billion.
  Customers who own massive data warehouses use them. They are the only game in town. DB2 is the only thing that comes close and IBM consultants are not cheap either. SQL Server is not in the same league. No mysql is not a real database. Sure it now has foreign keys, transactions, nested statements, as a brand new cool thing, but Oracle has had all of that for 25 years. Oracle can do data mining and anaylsis of data using dimensions and a whole bunch of things in peta byte scales.
  True some stupid corporations love using Oracle Enterprise for a silly small 100 meg database over MySQL but that is up to them. Until things catch up they will remain powerful and prefered. SQL Server is starting too.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
10. Re:Corporapocalypse by Billly+Gates · 2011-09-01 14:03 · Score: 1
  
  They do have a competion now.
  That is the cloud. Personally I prefer Oracle as it would at least leave us jobs left to manage the servers.
  With Oracle charging outragous and downright barron rates to existing customers the Cloud is promising savings. Eventually Oracle will push customers to this in order to save money and throw out our jobs in the process. But maybe that is not a bad thing.
  Larry appears asleep at the wheel on this one. You can hold companies hostage because their data is on your product for so long before someone offers a cheap way out where they can focus on their business rather than I.T. They need to lower their prices
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
11. Re:Corporapocalypse by Mongoose+Disciple · 2011-09-01 15:53 · Score: 1
  
  True some stupid corporations love using Oracle Enterprise for a silly small 100 meg database over MySQL but that is up to them.
  Uses of Oracle of this form account for easily 95% of the Oracle licenses I've seen in my career.
  Say this for Oracle: They have amazing salesmen who can do the equivalent of sell an Formula One car and full pit crew to soccer moms who just want a car to get groceries with.
12. Re:Corporapocalypse by Billly+Gates · 2011-09-01 18:49 · Score: 1
  
  Well if you already use Oracle for your data wharehouse and your I.T. department is trained and has licences already then why not use it?
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
13. Re:Corporapocalypse by mangu · 2011-09-02 01:37 · Score: 1
  
  I would tax dividends paid from corporation to corporation, but not dividends paid from corporations to humans. That would make it less attractive for one corporation to own another.
  The problem today is that corporation management answer only to themselves when one corporation owns another. If all corporations were owned by people there would exist someone whose best interest would be in how effective the company was, not in how much they could milk the cash box without going to jail.
14. Re:Corporapocalypse by Mongoose+Disciple · 2011-09-06 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  Because most companies, even ones that probably should have a robust data warehouse, don't.
  Oh, the stories I could tell you of Fortune 500 companies whose entire record of swaths of financial and historical information reside in Access 97 databases even though the company is using Oracle for other things. Well, the stories I could tell you, NDAs notwithstanding.
Imaginary Customers by Swanktastic · 2011-09-01 09:33 · Score: 3, Interesting

"Rather than providing evidence of SAP's actual use of the copyrighted works, and objectively verifiable number of customers lost as a result, Oracle presented evidence of the purported value of the intellectual property as a whole, elicited self-serving testimony from its executives regarding the price they claim they would have demanded in an admittedly fictional negotiation, and proffered the speculative opinion of its damages expert, which was based on little more than guesses about the parties' expectations."
This comment from the judge is fascinating considering every software company out there pegs their piracy losses at face value rather than pointing to evidence of lost sales.
1. Re:Imaginary Customers by cheekyjohnson · 2011-09-01 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  Be easy on them. After all, you can trust them to come up with the right amount of money that they potentially lost (they can see into alternate realities).
  
  --
  Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
2. Re:Imaginary Customers by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 13:01 · Score: 0
  
  Does oracle have a patent for this? This sounds like the (MAF)IAA business model to me.
It's all about the share prices by Nethemas+the+Great · 2011-09-01 09:35 · Score: 2

These lawsuits look good to the shareholders. They short circuit their critical thinking skills in very much the same way gambling does. Indeed these lawsuits are just that, corporate gambling with potentially massive payouts.

--
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
Note to SAP by roman_mir · 2011-09-01 10:16 · Score: 2

SAP. It's much cheaper to hire an assassin than to pay 1.3 billion to an extortionist (and it's never the right policy to pay the Dane-Geld). I think extortion is never right and above certain level any response becomes justified. People dealt with extortionists very harshly when they could over the history of human race. I don't see many people crying over Oracle's CEO should something nasty happen to him.

--
You can't handle the truth.
1. Re:Note to SAP by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 10:32 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, but then you get into Mob-style gang wars with companies knocking off each others' CEOs right and left. Wait, I'm sure there's a downside in there somewhere...
2. Re:Note to SAP by Ossifer · 2011-09-01 10:42 · Score: 1
  
  FTFA: "SAP had admitted liability for illegal downloads of Oracle software and support materials..."
  You might also want note to SAP not to do that again...
3. Re:Note to SAP by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 12:14 · Score: 0
  
  No, there isn't. If someone had a multi-billion dollar judgment against me, you can bet your sweet ass they would be taking a dirt nap. But I would have also targeted the lawyers involved before the CIO. All of the lawyers heads in a plastic bag and dumped on the CEO while he slept, THEN whack the CEO after he woke up screaming.
  I am really surprised more lawyers haven't ended up dead. seriously surprised...
4. Re:Note to SAP by Billly+Gates · 2011-09-01 14:10 · Score: 1
  
  What people forget too is that Oracle purchased PeopleSoft who is Sap's biggest competitor. I think this has less to do with Java more than it does hurting your competitors and making them bleed.
  Larry has been known to get pretty obsessive in its war over Microsoft a decade ago. Remember the story of Oracle hiring detectives to sort through garbage at Microsoft anti trust trail in order to file a friend of the court with the bundling of IE? Larry lobbied large amounts of money to make sure Microsoft was split up to Bill Clinton.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
5. Re:Note to SAP by Billly+Gates · 2011-09-01 14:13 · Score: 1
  
  "I am really surprised more lawyers haven't ended up dead. seriously surprised...
  "
  Larry has a billion dollars and could hire an even bigger crime family to go after you.
  Remember, use the mob and you owe them a favor. It will be impossible to become clean again.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
6. Re:Note to SAP by Ksevio · 2011-09-01 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  That's be pretty easy considering how close they are:
  http://maps.google.com/?ll=42.483666,-71.199292&spn=0.005855,0.009581&t=h&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=42.48347,-71.19968&panoid=-gZgbFangE_igV6WQLrVuQ&cbp=12,183.42,,0,-5.14
  SAP on the left, Oracle on the right.
7. Re:Note to SAP by rubycodez · 2011-09-01 17:44 · Score: 1
  
  and of course Oracle blames former SAP CEO, who is now head of HP. So this thing is part of the HP vs. Oracle fight. Fry up the popcorn, it's gonna be a hoot.
8. Re:Note to SAP by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-01 20:22 · Score: 0
  
  SAP. It's much cheaper to hire an assassin than to pay 1.3 billion to an extortionist
  I find your views interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
9. Re:Note to SAP by sjames · 2011-09-02 12:11 · Score: 1
  
  It's been a long time since either company has been anything like clean.
  Of course, SAP could hire a non-union contract killer and avoid the problem.
10. Re:Note to SAP by paulo.casanova · 2011-09-06 08:18 · Score: 1
  
  I thought SAP headquarters were on Germany... quite far from Oracle actually :)
Re:North America Packet Loss: by Amouth · 2011-09-01 10:19 · Score: 1

it's off topic but yea there is currently a lot of loss
http://www.internetpulse.net/

--
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Re:I am not sure I understand the point here? by TaoPhoenix · 2011-09-01 11:18 · Score: 1

You got Whooshed.
Selling products is old and busted. Making money off IP Lawsuits over square pieces of plastic is where it's at.

--
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine