The conference covered the schedule and scope of discovery, and details of the discussion and decisions will soon be released in a court order from the Northern District Court in San Francisco.
The two parties were asked to agree on a special master to assist on discovery issues. There was also discussion about the use of mediation to settle the case, which was one of SAP’s requests. In terms of the schedule, a further case-management conference was set for February 12, 2008, with a trial date of February 9, 2009. Four weeks have been allocated for the trial. Motions can be filed earlier, but the last date presiding judge Martin Jenkins will hear motions will be November 13, 2008.
The most significant outcome of this first case conference will concern limitations on discovery. Oracle had pushed for discovery to reach into SAP’s mainstream operations on the grounds that it sought to discover whether the SAP business as a whole had benefited from the unauthorized downloads carried out by its TomorrowNow subsidiary. SAP has always said there was a firewall between SAP and TomorrowNow, so it has sought to restrict discovery to the third-party maintenance business unit.
