SAP to pay interest in $1.3bn Oracle case

SAP has been ordered to pay interest on the fine it was dealt in November for copyright infringement against Oracle through its subsidiary TomorrowNow.

On 10 December Oracle claimed that SAP owed an additional $211m in interest on top of the $1.3bn (£842m) Oracle was awarded by a US court to compensate for the software licences that should have been purchased in 2005 and 2006.

SAP appealed the claim on 23 December. The company argued that the "the court should decline to award any prejudgement interest, just as many other courts entering judgement on copyright claims have done", according to the court filing.

Instead SAP requested that the court "award interest at a flat rate equal to the weekly average one year constant maturity Treasury yield (which is currently .30 percent), compounded annually, and computed from the only non-speculative date from which interest could accrue — September 29, 2006".

Judge Phyllis Hamilton agreed that interest should be paid to Oracle, but not at the $211m level requested. The final amount of the interest to be paid is not yet known.

The three-year legal case between the software giants resulted in a $1.3bn fine when the court ruled in favour of Oracle. The court upheld claims that former SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow downloaded copyright protected materials and software from Oracle servers.

In August, SAP admitted liability for the company's actions but contested that the damages caused were only in the "tens of millions".

At the time of writing spokespeople for Oracle and SAP had not provided comment.