Oracle sues rival SAP over "corporate theft"

The lawsuit claims SAP employees using the log in credentials of Oracle customers with expired or soon to expire support rights had, in a matter of a few days, accessed and copied thousands of materials.

The downloads were significant and spanned the support Web site, Oracle said. For example, the lawsuit claimed SAP, using one customer's credential, downloaded an average of more than 1,800 items per day for four straight days far above the average of 20 per month.

The lawsuit charges that such downloads originated not from any actual customer location but from an Internet address in Texas registered to SAP's wholly owned subsidiary TomorrowNow, founded by former PeopleSoft executives. Oracle purchased PeopleSoft in 2005.

"This theft appears to be an essential and illegal part of SAP's competitive strategy against Oracle," the 43 page complaint said.

Oracle shares were up more than 1.6 percent at $18.47 in afternoon trade while SAP shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange were down about 0.6 percent at $46.09.

(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt)