SAP to pay Oracle $359 million to end long-running dispute over theft of copyrighted material

Business software maker SAP is paying rival Oracle $359 million to settle a bitter battle over the theft of copyrighted instruction manuals and other technical information.

The resolution disclosed in a Thursday court filing comes seven years after Oracle Corp. sued SAP AG for a scheme engineered by a small software services company called TomorrowNow. SAP, which is based in Walldorf, Germany, bought TomorrowNow for $10 million.

A jury initially awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in damages, but a federal judge lowered the amount to $272 million.

An appeals court in August rejected Oracle's request to reinstate the original damages and ruled the Redwood Shores, California, company was entitled to $356.7 million in damages or a new trial.

Oracle chose to accept $356.7 million in damages plus $2.5 million in interest.