Oracle-SAP court faceoff postponed

FRANKFURT, Germany - SAP AG's first court meeting with rival Oracle Corp. over an industrial espionage lawsuit has been rescheduled for Sept. 11, the German company said Wednesday.

The two companies were set to meet in a San Francisco federal court this week but the judge fell ill.

The Sept. 11 date is tentative, pending final approval from the court, SAP told Dow Jones Newswires.

Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle sued SAP on March 22, accusing the Walldorf-based company of "corporate theft on a grand scale" and claiming that SAP obtained secret product information to gain new customers.

SAP has acknowledged "some inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents occurred at TomorrowNow" - a Texas-based customer support unit authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site. But it said the data remained within that unit's system and SAP did not have access to Oracle's intellectual property.

SAP and TomorrowNow have been asked by the U.S. Justice Department to provide documents related to Oracle's lawsuit, the company said.

SAP bought TomorrowNow in early 2005, around the same time Oracle completed its $11.1 billion PeopleSoft acquisition. TomorrowNow, which operates as SAP TN, was formed by several former PeopleSoft engineers promising to provide less expensive software support.

SAP said TomorrowNow was authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers.

In its lawsuit, Oracle claimed that TomorrowNow infiltrated Oracle's systems by using the log-in information of defecting customers and then tried to conceal its actions by using phony phone numbers and fake e-mail addresses, the lawsuit alleged.

Oracle and SAP have long engaged in public exchanges of one-upmanship as they fight for new customers and try to pull service contracts from their each other's existing customer base.

Source: www.mercurynews.com