SAP moves against 'patent troll' attacking its financial sector customers

SAP defends itself against Pi-Net International's 'business process' based US patents

SAP has moved to defend the users of its Sybase database software by filing suit against Pi-Net International, a "patent troll" that has filed several patent infringement lawsuits against SAP customers in the US financial services sector over patents it claims SAP is infringing.

Pi-Net claims that SAP's Financial Fusion software, used for online banking, among other things, infringes three of its software patents. SAP acquired the Financial Fusion product as a result of its 2010 acquisition of Sybase.

However, instead of sueing SAP directly, Pi-Net has gone after the softer target represented by the companies that use the software.

According to reports, at least one customer has already asked SAP to indemnify it against any liabilities that could arise from Pi-Net's litigation.

SAP filed suit on 19 March in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, requesting a declaratory judgment stating that its products do not infringe Pi-Net's patents, in a bid to defend itself and its customers from Pi-Net's legal action.

The Pi-Net patents cover "multimedia transaction services", "web application network portal" and "value-added network system for enabling real-time, bi-directional transactions on a network," according to SAP's suit.

Information about Pi-Net, though, is sketchy, despite the claim that it services Fortune-500 companies in a wide range of product sectors - and all by a company without even an apparent website. It is not a technology products or software company and, according to reports, is associated with a Menlo Park, California-based company called WebXchange.

Pi-Net itself has been involved in a series of legal actions, including one against Delaware-based Sovereign Bank, Capital One, JP Morgan, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, Mission National Bank, and more than 35 US-based credit unions.

SAP has no doubt done its research and figures that a company like Pi-Net lacks the resources to take on SAP in a head-to-head fight, reasoning that it may be able to make headway against users that would prefer to settle out of court rather than defend a long and expensive court case.

Pi-Net's founder, Lakshmi Arunachalam, claims to have "directed Network Architecture at Sun Microsystems, at IBM, AT&T Bell Labs, Carnegie Mellon Andrew File System and NSFNET projects from IBM, has led standards' bodies such as IEEE802, IEEE POSIX X.500, X/Open. She also worked at NASA Johnson Space Center with MITRE Corporation," according to one online profile.

It further claims that Lakshmi received a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from "Manchester, England, and [a] MS in Physics from British Columbia, Canada, Computer Science from University of Houston, and a B.S. and M.S. in Physics from University of Madras, India. She has published several books and papers in computer networking and holds several patents to her credit."