In making a record award, either the jury in the Oracle v TomorrowNow case wanted to get home early for Thanksgiving or Oracle’s lawyers and witnesses dazzled them into believing that Oracle is entitled to close on the full value of the license that Oracle claims it would have wanted to be paid.
The figure of $1.3 billion the jury awarded is an order of magnitude higher than any previous award.
The jury were given the choice of making an award based upon a fair market value license or lost profits. If the jury had looked at lost profits then it is difficult to conceive how they could have awarded anything approaching this amount. Even looking at fair market value, one wonders how they managed to compute such a figure given the number of customers TomorrowNow actually secured and the value of those contracts.
You can be sure that Oracle will milk this for all its worth but in the meantime SAP will almost certainly appeal the verdict. SAP has already expressed ‘disappointment’ according to the Wall Street Journal.
While SAP would not have difficulty in settling this amount, it will crimp the company’s ability to expand through any planned acquisitions, despite it has recently refinanced its core €1.5 billion revolving credit facility.
In the meantime, the verdict by the Twitterati was simple: ‘#ouch.’
