Update: The Acquisition That Keeps On Giving. SAP Agrees To Pay Criminal Fine of $20 million For TomorrowNow's Transgressions.
In 2005, SAP acquired TomorrowNow, a company designed to provide third party
maintenance for Oracle software. Unfortunately, TomorrowNow chose to reduce its operating costs by pirating a bunch of Oracle software and then using it in its business.
Oracle found that to be somewhat offensive and sued TomorrowNow and SAP and originally obtained a judgment against them for $1.3 billion dollars. We recently noted that a judge had reduced this amount to a mere $272 million.
During the civil trial, federal prosecutors listened and then filed criminal charges against TomorrowNow. TomorrowNow is basically defunct and has fewer than ten employees and no individuals were named in the indictment. This was done as part of a plea bargain and SAP worked out a deal where they would pay a $20 million dollar fine for TomorrowNow, even though SAP was not named in the indictment either. One would have to assume that some individual actually performed the criminal act of stealing the software, although in this case, it appears that Mitt Romney is correct in that: "Corporations are people, my friend." At least for plea bargains.
