Legal maneuvering: SAP and Oracle likely to meet in court over TomorrowNow
Reuters -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 5/26/2008 2:50:00 PM
It’s not likely that SAP and Oracle will reach an out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit in which Oracle accuses SAP of stealing confidential information in the course of bringing the TomorrowNow consulting business under the SAP corporate umbrella.
“[An out-of-court settlement] is a possibility that we never ruled out,” SAP’s CFO Werner Brandt recently told the German Sunday weekly newspaper Euro am Sonntag. “But for the moment it is not an issue. There are no talks over and above the regular court proceedings."
SAP purchased TomorrowNow—which specializes in third-party maintenance and support of JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel applications—in January 2005. Since Oracle had recently acquired those three vendors, SAP’s purchase of TomorrowNow was an obvious attempt to siphon potential revenue away from Oracle.
In addition to offering these new Oracle customer-service agreements, SAP instituted a program to encourage them to migrate to SAP applications.
The plan went sour in March of this year when Oracle sued SAP, alleging that TomorrowNow consultants were appropriating proprietary Oracle information in the course of their work with JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel users.
Late last year, it appeared SAP would avoid litigating this case by selling TomorrowNow. The stage for such a move was set with the mid-November announcement that TomorrowNow CEO David Nelson and several members of his management team had decided to leave the company.
In a news release announcing this “management transition,” SAP also said it is considering several options for the future of TomorrowNow, including a possible sale. No movement on a sale has been made, however, and no mention of it was made in Brandt’s interview with the German newspaper. Instead, he spoke in positive terms about SAP’s future.
