Report: Oracle Urges Jury To Award $1.7 Billion For Software Theft

Oracle's high-profile white-collar legal counsel David Boies on Monday told a jury in Oakland that it should award the company $1.7 billion in damages because rival SAP deliberately encouraged a subsidiary to illegally download and copy hundreds of thousands of versions of Oracle software in 2005, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News.

"This lawsuit goes to the very heart of the software industry," Boies told the jury.

Boies is a managing partner at the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and an alumni of the senate antitrust subcommittee and a former staff director of the full senate judiciary committee.

He's most well known in popular culture for his legal representation of the U.S. Justice Department in its landmark antitrust case against Microsoft. He's also been an advisor to the SCO Group in the long-running copyright dispute over the Unix operating system.

SAP's attorney Robert Mittelstaedt said that Oracle was overreaching, and urged the jury to limit damages to about $40 million.

The company has admitted to contributory liability for SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow's infringing activities, according to the report.

"They have been asking for far more than they are entitled to and trying to trick you into doing that," the Mercury News reported Mittelstaedt arguing.