Oracle has started legal action against SAP after claiming its rival had stolen copyrighted software and other confidential materials.
Business software maker Oracle, engaged in a fierce market battle with SAP, last night accused the German company of gaining repeated and unauthorised access to its password-protected customer support website.
This allowed SAP to copy thousands of Oracle software products and other confidential materials onto its own servers to compile an illegal library of copyrighted software code, the lawsuit charged.
"This case is about corporate theft on a grand scale, committed by the largest German software company - a conglomerate known as SAP," said the lawsuit, filed in US District Court in San Francisco.
An SAP representative in Germany had no immediate comment.
Oracle has spent $20 billion buying software rivals over the past three years to challenge SAP, the leader in corporate applications that help automate everything from accounting to human resources to inventory management.
Oracle is expanding into that market as its core database business matures.