Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Under normal circumstances, we attack the behavior of the ERP monopolist SAP with our DSAG. This time, to my wife's surprise, I'm taking on the role of SAP's defender. We have known Gerd Oswald for twenty years, my wife says after reading the Spiegel article, issue 46/2021, page 62, and says vigorously like a prosecutor: "These are the unwritten laws of all global corporations, but never a personal misconduct of Gerd Oswald."

There are allegations of intellectual theft to gain a competitive advantage. To put it simply, industrial espionage is alleged to have taken place in Oswald's area of responsibility - which puts us on very thin legal ice, because being right and getting right are two very different things, as we all know. In colloquial terms, SAP was and is probably now also engaged in competitor monitoring, and because at large corporations like SAP and, as is the case with us, every activity has to end up in a board department at the end of the day, Gerd Oswald was identified as the culprit here.

We at DSAG know that SAP sometimes plays on the edge of legality - especially when it comes to licenses and terms and conditions. All too often the principle applies here: trial and error will probably still be allowed. I cannot answer whether SAP perhaps tried too much in the recent "Oracle" case and in the current "Teradata" case.

However, Der Spiegel tries to construct an almost criminal story from a legal opinion in which the name Gerd Oswald is often mentioned. It seems obvious and logical to me what can be read in this expert opinion: This specific type of competitor monitoring, like any other task, needs a sponsor from the Board of Management, this time it was Gerd Oswald - not personally, but purely administratively. External and internal legal advisors have the duty to clearly point out all possible dangers, in line with the quoted motto: Being right and getting right are not the same thing. Our Group also monitors competitors intensively around the world.

What hurts is the fact that Spiegel is addressing a problem in the software industry here, but watering it down with false factual claims about SAP. The protection of individual intellectual creations such as algorithms seems very important to me. However, there are no standardized procedures worldwide for granting software patents. Intellectual property is more important than ever in the cloud computing age. If a smaller software company or financially weak start-up moves onto a public cloud platform with an idea, there is always the danger that a more potent start-up or a rich large corporation will very quickly mold this idea into a finished product.

It is not the big that eat the small, but the fast that overtake the slow. However, if this realization undermines the protection of intellectual property, then all innovation comes to an end. It therefore seems to me that the fact that SAP, together with a university institute, has applied the motto "Jugend forscht" a little too enthusiastically is reprehensible, but not punishable.

I take a more critical view of the lack of rules for dealing with ideas and intellectual property from computer scientists. There is also a lack of discourse here between SAP and many SAP partners, some of whom are reluctant to go to the SAP Business Technology Platform with innovative ideas - knowing full well that ideas have no copyright. Until there is a compiled algorithm, proving individual intellectual creation is extremely difficult. Many innovative business processes are merely an idea and the combination of existing software modules. Spiegel could have used the example of SAP to initiate an important discussion here, as is currently being conducted at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), see also EU Directive 2009/24/EC.

To protect digital transformation and innovation, the SAP community should take the topic of "protecting intellectual property" very seriously and continue to discuss it. However, crime stories such as those in Spiegel 46/2021 are of little help here.