By Matthias Kros
Walldorf. The software company SAP is once again facing accusations in the USA of abusing its market power and stealing data from competitors. In this context, an appeals court in San Francisco has reopened a trial between the US data technology company Teradata and the Walldorf-based company. It overturned a lower court ruling in which the court had ruled in favor of SAP in 2021. Now the legal dispute will be decided in a higher instance.
Teradata accuses the DAX group of intellectual property theft, industrial espionage and fraud. In 2018, the Americans sued the Germans and demanded damages: SAP lured Teradata into a joint venture in order to steal trade secrets, on the basis of which HANA, an in-memory database, was then developed, was the accusation. The Walldorf-based company could only have developed HANA by misappropriating Teradata's intellectual property, claims those responsible for Teradata.
However, the US court rejected Teradata's claims in 2021. The panel of the Federal Court of Appeal now criticized this decision of the lower court because it excluded testimony from an expert on antitrust law issues such as market share and definition in the case.
The people of Walldorf always rejected the allegations. This is also the case now: “We recently received the court’s decision and are currently reviewing it,” SAP said in a statement on Friday. “We are disappointed and disagree with the outcome and are now considering our options.” Teradata welcomed the court's decision.
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SAP has had to deal with similar allegations several times in the past. The most spectacular case was probably in 2010, when the software company was sued and convicted by its American arch-rival Oracle. When taking over the software service provider TomorrowNow, SAP gained access to copyrighted files from Oracle servers. SAP basically admitted the wrongdoing and ultimately had to pay $357 million in damages to Oracle in a settlement.
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