Details from new court documents show potential legal quagmires for both third-party maintenance and support providers and their customers. Will the case rock the whole third-party maintenance business? No, say TomorrowNow's rivals.
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Oracle v. SAP Legal Fight Gets Messier, Raises Tough Questions About Third-Party Maintenance
READER FEEDBACK
Anonymous Tue, 2008-04-29 09:04
"Do the licenses between Oracle and its customers prevent TomorrowNow from access to that software to provide third party support?"
I am sure that it is exactly this what needs to be decided.
How would you be able to "steal" documentation? If your customer - the company using the license - asks you for support you are being engaged in place of the customer. If the customer has the right to read the docs, you have it.
Now if I use the docs - do I have to do this from the customer's site?
If I use the docs - what worth is information about any IT system, if I do not plan to use it on the system - saying that if I'm allowed to support my customer I'm allowed to acquire the information. If one of my customers is using module "A" I have the right to look it up. And it doesn't make sense to read documents about module "A", if I don't have a customer using module "A".
Now - taking the Oracle information and use it to improve the SAP products - is this allowed? I have heard about car makers that buy models from their competitors, take them apart, analyze them and improve their products. Is this allowed? I would say that this is to the customers advantage.
Having seen both - Oracle and SAP - I would recommend Oracle to look at the SAP system in certain areas - if it would be legal.
Just my 2c
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