X
Business

Oracle's Ellison testifies in SAP infringement case

The company's chief executive has taken the stand in the case against SAP in an attempt to quantify how much Oracle lost due to alleged intellectual property theft
Written by Sam Diaz, Inactive

Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison took that stand at his company's TomorrowNow trial vs SAP and was pressed to quantify how many customers were lost to his arch-rival over third-party support.

Oracle is seeking damages of $1bn (£807m) from SAP over infringement by its now defunct TomorrowNow unit, which offered third-party support for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards software. SAP has admitted guilt and the trial in US District Court for Northern California is designed to pinpoint damages. Attorneys were instructed to only focus questions on damages.

Those damages largely depend on whether Oracle can quantify customers lost to SAP over TomorrowNow due to intellectual property theft. Ellison said that if SAP were to license the intellectual property stolen by TomorrowNow, it would cost about $4bn in a negotiation.

Ellison also noted that SAP's acquisition of TomorrowNow was "a brilliant idea". The rub was that SAP would have to hire hundreds if not thousands of engineers to support Oracle applications.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Oracle vs. SAP: Ellison pressed to quantify customer losses over TomorrowNow on ZDNet.com.

Editorial standards