Without access to the evidence in the complaint, Norman describes two potential scenarios. One is that TomorrowNow used information from Oracle to offer services to customers whose contracts with Oracle precluded them from using third-party services. The other, and more serious claim, is that TomorrowNow stole trade secrets and intellectual property from Oracle not to serve customers that can legitimately receive service from the SAP subsidiary, but so SAP can compete with Oracle.
Though the claims "look bad" for SAP, Norman said he finds it "hard to believe" SAP would commit such crimes. "SAP is a big company and fairly conservative; I would find it surprising if that were going on," he said. "It might be at the lower-tier employee level, and it never bubbled up to the right people who stopped it."
Denis Pombriant, managing principal of Beagle Research, in Stoughton, Massachusetts, also thinks it's unlikely top-level SAP management had anything to do with the alleged actions by TomorrowNow. However, with the relationship between Oracle and SAP as contentious as it is, "nothing would surprise me," he said.
If SAP did want to obtain proprietary Oracle materials for nefarious purposes, doing it through TomorrowNow would be "an ideal front," Pombriant said.
"They could blame TomorrowNow for the problem if they got caught," he said. "There is plausible deniability here."
Pombriant added that the decision in the case probably will come down to "motive and whether or not it could be proven there was an attempt [by SAP] to cause harm."
(China Martens in Boston contributed to this report.)
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