Oracle accuses SAP of "Corporate theft on a grand scale"

Real stop presss stuff as we close down for the evening.

Oracle is suing SAP over massive corporate fraud. SAP, Oracle claims, has been running an illegal mirror of Oracle's online support system, in order to maintain a customer care program designed to steal Oracle's customers by offering them cut-price support, then moving them over to SAP's systems.

Oracle's quoting tons of evidence, including records of 10,000 illicit downloads in 2006 to IP addresses traceable to SAP, with fake customers and all manner of related shenanigans.

This looks like one of the most forthright accusations ever made by one company against another, even by the industry's rather fractious standards. Read the claim here, and settle down for what promises to be a most entertaining - and costly, for someone - legal battle.