IDG News Service - Oracle and SAP may be back in court on June 18 to begin a retrial of Oracle's corporate theft lawsuit involving SAP's former TomorrowNow subsidiary, according to a judge's order Thursday.
Oracle was awarded US$1.3 billion in damages from SAP last November as compensation for TomorrowNow's theft of software and support materials from an Oracle website.
SAP argued the sum was unfairly high, and the court agreed, overturning the jury's award. Oracle was given a choice of accepting a lower damages amount of $272 million or going into a new trial, and earlier this month it picked the new trial.
The two weeks starting June 18 are the only two weeks free on the judge's calendar this year, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the Northern District Court of California said in her scheduling order Thursday. If Oracle and SAP reject that date, they can choose Aug. 13, 2013, or else hope an opening comes up before then.
It will be a busy year for Oracle in the courts. The company is fighting two other big cases that are due to go to trial this year. One was brought by Hewlett-Packard, over Oracle's decision to drop support for Itanium. The other is Oracle's suit against Google for alleged patent and copyright violations in Android.
James Niccolai covers data centers and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow James on Twitter at @jniccolai. James's e-mail address is james_niccolai@idg.com
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