SAP in a petition made public on Tuesday said a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California that reinstated Teradata’s lawsuit will threaten American tech innovation if it is left in place.
Teradata accused SAP of violating antitrust law by “tying” sales of business-planning applications with the purchase of a key SAP database that can perform transactional and analytical functions. Teradata makes a rival analytics database.
In its filing at the high court, SAP said the integration of software products can often benefit consumers and “represent an effort to ‘compete effectively,’ rather than to stifle competition.”
SAP declined to comment. Teradata did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
San Diego-based Teradata filed its lawsuit against SAP in federal court in California in 2018. The two companies once had a joint venture, but SAP terminated it after developing its own analytics database.
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SAP won in the district court, but the 9th Circuit revived Teradata’s case in December. The appeals court said there was material dispute between the companies that a jury could decide. If the Supreme Court takes the case, the justices could rule on which legal standard judges should use to weigh antitrust tying claims.
Two key legal standards guide how judges resolve whether conduct restrains competition: the “per se rule,” where alleged conduct is presumed illegal, and the “rule of reason,” where judges balance between anticompetitive effects and a defendant’s procompetitive justification.
The 9th Circuit, using a version of the “per se rule,” applied too stringent a standard in evaluating Teradata’s claims, SAP told the justices.
SAP said the appellate court’s ruling clashed with how a Washington federal appeals court resolved a landmark antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s.
