SAN FRANCISCO, March 22 (UPI) -- Oracle Corp. said Thursday it sued German rival SAP AG in San Francisco for allegedly engaging in a "massive" theft of internal Oracle information.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges SAP customer-support employees used customer login information to illegally download "massive quantities of software and support materials beyond their license rights, over and over again," to compile an "illegal library of Oracle's copyrighted software code and other materials."
SAP's TomorrowNow customer-support subsidiary offers support for Oracle customers such as Honeywell International Inc. and Merck & Co., which use software from Siebel Systems, PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards -- three companies Oracle owns.
"SAP appears to have taken a shortcut to equip itself to support Oracle's software programs at half Oracle's price," the lawsuit charges. SAP charges about half the rate Oracle charges for customer support.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified punitive damages and an injunction preventing SAP from accessing Oracle's Web site as well as the return of any Oracle property.
A SAP spokesman in Walldorf, Germany, said the company was reviewing the lawsuit and had no immediate comment.
SAP is the leader in corporate applications.
