Versata Software has won a patent case against SAP. A jury has awarded Versata $138.64 million in damages on SAP’s tab. The jury found that SAP violated 5 of Versata’s patents. The patents awarded to Versata took place between 1998-2006.
The patents were related to system configuration and pricing products. Versata filed the complaint around 2007. The SAP Business Suite was supposedly in violation of the configuration patents. Versata did win the financial goal they were looking for, but now they are also seeking an injunction against SAP.
“Our attorneys are reviewing the legal options and we expect to file an appeal,” stated Andy Kendzie, an SAP spokesman. “We don’t believe this will have any immediate, negative impact on our customers.”
Versata itself started in 2006 when Trilogy acquired the company and took the same name. Versata has been on a company acquisition binge since. The most recent acquisition that Versata made was Everest Software.
SAP has acquired carbon emissions firm Clear Standards. Clear Standards is a two year old software company based in Sterling, Virginia.
Clear Standards develops web applications that helps companies develop strategies for cabon emission management, thus resulting in environmental impact reduction. For example, Clear Standard’s software has a way to track the inventory of a company’s emissions and set regulation monitors. This enables companies to reduce energy and waste.
The software is especially useful for regulated companies around Europe and companies who have voluntary sustainability programs. Clear Standards will be rolled into SAP’s Environment, Safety Management, and Health applications.
“It is essential that organizations gain actionable insight into their carbon emissions, water consumption, energy use and other environmental factors so they can lower their environmental impact,” stated SAP co-CEO Leo Apotheker. “Having this ability also correlates to an organization’s efficiency and competitiveness.”
Clear Standards has also developed a free iPhone application called Carbon Tracker.
IT consulting company SAP has been engaged with 25-30 contract attorneys and is spending millions of dollars in order to defend themselves in a very lengthy lawsuit with Waste Management. Waste Management has been accusing SAP of a flawed ERP implementation system.
SAP has paid over $1 million to an e-discovery software vendor and hired outside counsel to review documents and interview over 100 SAP employees. Waste Management decided to sue SAP in March 2008 for over $100 million in damages linked to their ERP software. SAP claimed that their ERP was an “out of the box” solution to Waste Management’s inefficient processes, but there was not much of a change.
However SAP is claiming that they are not at fault because Waste Management failed to deliver “timely and accurately define its business requirements” or provide “sufficient, knowledgeable, decision-empowered users and managers” for the ERP project.
The trial is set for this October, but SAP wants to push it until 2010. SAP is also dealing with another lawsuit revolving around I.P. with rival Oracle.
SAP (NYSE:SAP), the company behind one of the most popular enterprise software is getting into the cloud computing game through the acquisition of Coghead. Coghead will be shutting down their business and letting go of customers as a part of the acquisition. SAP bought out Coghead’s intellectual property and hired their engineering team. SAP doesn’t plan on reselling Coghead’s service anytime soon.
“SAP is one of the premier tech companies in the world and we’re really happy this transaction took place,” stated Paul McNamara, Coghead’s CEO. “However, the Coghead business model is not in keeping with the kinds of things that SAP wants to do.”
Coghead’s primary service was to allow customers to develop and host database applications using a simple drag & drop interface. Coghead’s service will run through April, but after that it is safe to assume that the service will no longer be around.
Since Coghead started a few years ago, they raised about $13.7 million from El Dorado Ventures, American Capital Strategies, Western Technology Investment, and SAP Ventures.
Apparently SAP, Goldman Sachs, Bessemer Venture Partners, and McGraw Hill believe that relationships DO matter. Or at least back in June they did. The four companies invested $22.7 million on top of the $53 million LinkedIn received this past June. The total $75.7 million Series D investment is based on a $1 billion valuation.
To date, LinkedIn has raised over $100 million for their professional social network service. LinkedIn has about 370 employees and their revenues are growing 100% per year. LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye informed TechCrunch that the company has been profitable since 2006.
LinkedIn has about 30 million registered users. LinkedIn receives over 4 million uniques per month. The previous investors of the $53 million were Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Socialtext[1] is a Palo Alto, Calif. based company that builds wiki enterprise products. This type of product is especially useful for those who do not have the time or knowledge to set-up their own wiki. It is also useful for those who have become fed up with sending attachments back-and-forth through e-mail. I know a couple of start-ups that interact via wikis to report daily progress.
Socialtext announced that they have raised $3 million towards a desired $6.5 million Series C funding amount. Some of the previous investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson[2], SAP[3], Omidyar Network[4], Mark Pincus (CEO of Tribe.net[5]), and Reid Hoffman (Chairman of LinkedIn[6]). Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia[7] serves as a Board member for Socialtext.
Ross Mayfield, Peter Kaminski, and Adina Levin are founders of the company. A product tour is available at: http://www.socialtext.com/products/tour[8]. The Socialtext blog is available at: http://www.socialtext.com/blog/[9].
In November 2006, Google acquired Jotspot, a similar wiki concept[9]. Wetpaint, a wiki-builder website raised $9.5 million in funding[10] around January 2007 as well. Wikis are a strong market and millions of dollars are constantly being plugged in.
Socialtext[
