Not Again: SAP Pays $345M in Intellectual Property Case
Just when the German-based enterprise software applications giant was about to escape the dark cloud of its recent debacle courtesy of Oracle and departure of its CEO Leo Apotheker (who now heads HP), SAP is now obliged again to pay Versata Software Inc. a whopping $345 million for a software patent infringement. The lawsuit stated that Versata, developer of front-office enterprise software, was booted by the bigger SAP out of the market causing them to have zero sales in software.
According to Bloomberg report: “The federal jury in Marshall, Texas, said today that closely held Versata was owed compensation for sales of certain SAP enterprise and customer relationship-management software sold prior to May 2010. The jury awarded $260 million for lost profits and $85 million as a reasonable royalty.”
These issues have largely affected SAP’s performance and reputation in the industry. While the company’s revenues soar, investors were still disappointed by the profit—lagging by a mile from competition. SAP is now ordered to post $1 billion bond in Oracle case (that involved TomorrowNow project).
It’s really a royal rumble inside the patent infringement ring, with the big names battling it over for authenticity and branding sake. Other open infringement cases that the tech community is religiously following include Microsoft, HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson versus Apple’s European trademark “App Store”, Hynix and Micron versus Rambus , Apple losing case against Kodak for image preview in cameras and Klausner Technologies versus NEC.
SAP has lost almost $2 billion in lawsuits within the last 6 or 7 months. This sum could have been invested to some major researches on product development, building a new site or beefing up manpower. With major blows here and there, will SAP be reconsidering executive shake-up again or major revamp in their strategies?
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