Feud between Oracle and SAP heads to the Courts

“Oracle Corp. sued its archrival SAP on Thursday, alleging that its German competitor secretly and illegally obtained proprietary materials from the Redwood City giant’s customer support Web site The legal action highlights what has become an increasingly bitter rivalry between the two makers of business software. Oracle accused SAP of using its customers’ log-in information to obtain more than 10,000 unauthorized downloads of software and supporter materials related to hundreds of programs. ‘This case is about corporate theft on a grand scale, committed by the largest German software company,’ the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco said. SAP is the world’s No. 1 seller of business applications known as enterprise resource planning software, which companies use to perform such tasks as keeping track of financial transactions and monitoring inventory. Oracle, the world’s No. 1 seller of database systems, has been trying to expand into that market, mainly by buying other players, including onetime Bay Area technology firms such as PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems.”