Oracle Corp.’s share price up, puts an end to the copyright lawsuit against SAP SE by accepting a $359 million damages award

Oracle Corp. was reported to have accepted a total of $359 million in damages award in order to put an end to its copyright lawsuit against SAP SE, the biggest back-office business-management software supplier.

According to a court filing posted today, SAP is to pay a total of $356.7 million plus $2.5 million in interest.

The General Counsel of Oracle, Dorian Daley, said in an e-mail, cited by Bloomberg: “We are thrilled about this landmark recovery and extremely gratified that our efforts to protect innovation and our shareholder’s interests are duly rewarded. This sends a strong message to those who would prefer to cheat than compete fairly and legally.”

According to a statement made by SAP today, the agreement between the companies is to put an end to their disagreements, which started seven years ago and led to a copyright lawsuit claiming a damages award estimated to $1.3 billion.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, one of the spokesmen of SAP said that the company was happy that the court “ultimately accepted SAP’s arguments to limit Oracle’s excessive damages claims and that Oracle has finally chosen to end this matter” at the hearing.

The case was issued by Oracle in 2007 because it believed that thousands of illegal downloads and several thousand copies of software were made by SAP. The value of the eventual license broken by SAP was estimated by the jury to be $1.3 billion in damages. The federal judge said the claims were excessive and reduced the value of the compensation to $272 million.

Then, in August this year, the federal appeals court found the damages awarded in the verdict as too small and provided Oracle with the opportunity to accept a total of $356.7 million or start a new trial.

Oracle Corp. was up 1.44% to close at $40.72 per share yesterday, marking a one-year increase of 16.34%. The company is valued at $180.44 billion. According to CNN Money, the 33 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Oracle Corp. have a median target of $45.00, with a high estimate of $49.00 and a low estimate of $28.00. The median estimate represents a +10.51% increase from the last price of $40.72.