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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: Oracle Vs SAP Round 1
Mark,
The problem with what SAP did is not that they acquired the materials, it's that they then re-sold those materials as is. An inventor acquired a patent on his/her invention. That does not preclude anyone from seeing what he/she invented & how it works, it just prevents them from building the same thing & profiting solely from that. Now If I take your patent and modify the item you invented so that it does something else or does what it originally did in a better more efficient way then I've not violated your patent but created a derived work. Same thing goes for copyright. Additionally if my intent is to do as SAP did & provide a more value added support to the programs then I could license the source code from Oracle and be within my rights to produce patches & upgrades. I'd also have complied with law & provided Oracle with some compensation for and control over their IP. SAP did neither, therefore the lawsuit. Also Oracle probably didn't include their ex customers in the hopes that they'll come back. Kind of hard to sell someone a support renewal while your suing them at the same time. Course the lawsuit over the head may be a very good persuader.
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From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Brady, Mark
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 4:49 PM
To: oracle-l
Subject: RE: Oracle Vs SAP Round 1
First, nearly every business is in business to steal customers from other businesses. Those which aren't are monopolies which involve a whole other ball of wax.
The innovation could be utilizing the knowledge base more efficiently so as to offer BETTER service or CHEAPER service, not the SAME service. Who would switch to get the SAME service? Now people start switching and Oracle has an incentive to do it even better than SAP, all along the customers (even the ones who never switched) are benefited by SAP's theft - by having better service or cheaper service or both.
Whether or not the facts are complete and accurate and whether or not the actions described will be adjudicated as illegal is yet to be seen. The question Charles posed is (to be so bold to rephrase) if society benefits from the outcome of this action should we seek to criminalize the activity. Our current IP laws are supposed to benefit both the individual AND society, but do the laws as they currently stand maximize the total benefit? When you start reading about this, it's less black and white then you think.
From: Kerber, Andrew W. [mailto:Andrew.Kerber_at_umb.com]
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 4:15 PM
To: Brady, Mark; oracle-l
Subject: RE: Oracle Vs SAP Round 1
However, there is not really a debate here. If SAP copied all the oracle data as Oracle claims, it can have no other reason than to copy it to steal Oracle customers. There is no new development being done by SAP, no new technology that they can sell, they just stole the Oracle stuff and are trying to sell it as their own. There doesn't appear to be a grey area here.
-----Original Message-----
I would be curious to know if SAP could offer better quality support. =) Not to knock Oracle Support too hard, but as you all probably well know, it is not unheard of to end up with a newbie Support Analyst or run up against undocumented features and/or unpublished information.
I may be naive, but if a 3rd party can offer competitive services, would that not drive better market conditions for clients? Yes, I understand that the principle of stealing is essentially wrong, but I am purposefully wondering about competitive services.
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-- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Sat Mar 24 2007 - 15:55:28 CDT
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