Talk about dodging a bullet.
SAP AG, the world’s biggest enterprise software company, won’t have to pay rival Oracle $1.3 billion for copyright infringement after all after a federal judge today overturned Oracle’s successful jury verdict from last year, the largest amount of damages in history for software piracy.
“Grossly excessive,” was how U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton termed the size of the verdict in her ruling to reverse it, Reuters reports.
She also granted a motion for a new trial to decide the final amount in damages Oracle wil have to pay.
SAP was, not surprisingly, pleased with the news. A spokesman told Reuters the company was “very gratified,” adding “we hope the court’s action will help drive this matter to a final resolution.”
Oracle, not so much.
“We believe the jury got it right and we intend to pursue the full measure of damages that we believe are owed to Oracle,” a company spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal.
The original case, launched by Oracle in 2007, focused on SAP tech service subsidiary TomorrowNow’s use of Oracle customer login information to access and download Oracle internal documents.
TomorrowNow admitted to the theft and was closed in 2008.
But the case was memorable not only for the staggering size of its verdict, but because of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s public accusation last year that former SAP CEO Leo Apothecker, who had left the company and joined Hewlett Packard in late 2010 and remains there, had directed S&P’s software theft effort and would avoid testifying in the trial as a result.
“I hope I’m wrong, but my guess is that HP’s new chairman, Mr. Lane, will keep HP’s new CEO, Mr. Apotheker, far, far away from the courthouse until this trial is over,” Ellison wrote in a vitriolic screed issued by Oracle.
Apothecker did not end up testifying at the original trial, but Oracle won anyway. Now we’ll see how much SAP can bargain the damages down.
