Oracle Corporation has announced that it will expand its existing lawsuit filed against SAP.  Oracle has filed new court papers claiming that SAP’s subsidiary, TomorrowNow, stole Oracle software applications with the explicit knowledge of SAP executives. SAP responded that Oracle was exaggerating its claims and using the court and filings with the court as press releases, as well as failing to follow the Judge’s directions to attempt to settle the case with SAP.

The lawsuit was filed by Oracle against SAP and TomorrowNow last year, alleging that TomorrowNow employees illegally downloaded data from a secure Oracle support Web site, then used it to entice away Oracle's customers by trying to switch them to SAP’s platforms. SAP responded that TomorrowNow was authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site on behalf of TomorrowNow's customers, but has acknowledged that inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents occurred at TomorrowNow.

SAP excused itself from the wrongdoing by asserting that the information remained in TomorrowNow's systems and that SAP itself had no access to Oracle's intellectual property. TomorrowNow is a third-party support provider for Oracle's PeopleSoft, Siebel and J.D. Edwards software products.

Oracle now is claiming that SAP executives may have been complicit in the TomorrowNow violations, but did not name any particular executives of SAP.  SAP denies that these charges are not true and that its executives were not involved in the TomorrowNow actions. A case management conference is scheduled for next week in court.