Oracle's Legal Team Wins $1.3B Verdict Against SAP

It took an Oakland, Calif., federal district court jury less than a day of deliberation to award $1.3 billion to Oracle after the software company’s copyright damages trial against German rival SAP ended Monday. A trial team led by Boies Schiller & Flexner’s David Boies and Geoffrey Howard of Bingham McCutchen persuaded the eight-person jury to adopt Oracle’s model of assessing damages for SAP’s admitted copying of Oracle software through its subsidiary, TomorrowNow. The award may be shy of the $1.65 to $3 billion Boies pushed for in Oracle’s closing argument, but it dwarfs–to put it mildly–the $40 million calculation SAP’s lead lawyer, Robert Mittelstaedt of Jones Day, urged the jury to adopt on Monday.

“We’re feeling ecstatic, obviously,” said Bingham’s Howard, who delivered Oracle’s opening statement on Nov. 1. “The jury delivered a very strong message that intellectual property laws, which are the underpinning for the software industry, have to be respected.” The award isn’t just the biggest jury verdict of the year, it’s the biggest ever in a copyright infringement case, according to Bingham. “We had the facts and we had the law,” Boies told reporters in Oakland after the verdict was announced.