Dueling Experts Revisited: Oracle v. SAP

As anticipated, the court did not “split the difference” in the Oracle v. SAP copyright infringement damages decision, handed down yesterday.  As we discussed in a previous blog, the huge discrepancy between the damage assessments offered by the plaintiff’s and respondent’s experts was not as a result of differing valuation approaches, but rather an argument about what was to be included.  (Recall that guilt had been admitted.) In the end, Oracle’s expert prevailed, and a federal jury stunned SAP with a $1.3 Billion penalty, more than half of SAP’s last-year profits, and nearly 9x what SAP had set aside for the damages award.