Kagermann said SAP is preparing to put up a massive fight against Oracle and its accusations that employees at the SAP Tomorrow Now business unit had illegally used the login details of customers who had switched from Oracle to Tomorrow Now’s third-party maintenance program to access and download documents and other support-related information from Oracle’s web site. He said SAP is preparing a detailed response to the lawsuit and is looking into every claim.
The company believes the real driver for the lawsuit is an attempt by Oracle to stifle competition in the third-party maintenance market for its applications.
From the initial filing just under two months ago, it looked as though the lawsuit was going to be a long-winded affair, and nothing has occurred since then to suggest otherwise. The timescale has been lengthened however on the news that judge Maxine Chesney who was overseeing the lawsuit has stepped down from the case and asked for it to be reassigned. She did not give a reason for her move other than to say that she resigned after finding myself disqualified.
The move will have an immediate impact on the timetable for the lawsuit because all the dates that has been set for motions and pre-trial conferences will have to be reset by the newly appointed judge.
