US court overturns $1.3-bn copyright infringement verdict against SAP

In a surprise ruling, a US court late last week overturned an earlier $1.3-billion copyright infringement case awarded to Oracle against German business software maker SAP, calling it ''grossly excessive.''

In the keenly watched four year-old case, US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, reduced the award to $272 million and granted SAP's motion for a new trial to set damages if Oracle rejects the new verdict.

''The verdict grossly exceeded the actual harm to Oracle,'' said Hamilton in her order. The jury verdict ''was contrary to the weight of the evidence, and was grossly excessive.''

The ruling is the latest chapter in a case that dates to 2007, when Oracle sued TomorrowNow, an American subsidiary of SAP, for corporate theft, alleging it illegally downloaded masses of Oracle customer service materials and passed those documents to SAP (See: Oracle sues SAP for ''theft'' of corporate information) 

Oracle had claimed that staff at TomorrowNow had accessed Oracle's computer network and illegally downloaded and assembled a storehouse of stolen Oracle intellectual property comprising copyrighted software and other material.

Oracle and SAP - fierce rivals in the business software segment - have been battling for years for supremacy in the lucrative enterprise software market that is estimated at $60 billion.