US Supreme Court rejects software giant SAP's bid to avoid rival's antitrust suit

By Mike Scarcella WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a bid by Europe's largest software maker SAP to avoid a lawsuit by U.S. data technology company Teradata that accused it of violating American antitrust law. The justices turned away SAP's appeal of a lower court's decision that let Teradata pursue claims that its larger German rival violated U.S. antitrust law by tying sales of business-planning applications to the purchase of a key SAP database that can perform transactional and analytical functions. San Diego-based Teradata makes a rival analytics database. Teradata filed its lawsuit against SAP in federal court in California in 2018. SAP has denied any wrongdoing. A judge has scheduled an April 2026 trial on Teradata's claims, as well as on a counterclaim that SAP lodged against Teradata accusing it of patent infringement. SAP sells "enterprise resource planning" software to companies that lets them manage data used in daily activities such as finance and supply-chain operations. Teradata makes a database that can provide analytics on such a substantial amount of data. The company said SAP customers relied on other tech companies like Teradata to handle the data that SAP's applications produced. The lawsuit accused SAP of illegally tying sales of its business operations software with a new product that was developed to compete with Teradata's database. Two key legal standards guide how judges resolve whether conduct restrains competition: the "per se rule," under which alleged conduct is presumed illegal; and the "rule of reason," under which judges balance between anticompetitive effects and a defendant's procompetitive justification. SAP won in the district court, but the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived Teradata's case in 2024. The 9th Circuit said there was a material dispute between the companies that a jury could take up and decide. The 9th Circuit, using a version of the "per se rule," applied too stringent a standard in evaluating Teradata's claims, SAP told the Supreme Court in a filing. SAP said the 9th Circuit's ruling clashed with how another federal appeals court in Washington in 2001 resolved a landmark antitrust case against Microsoft. In its filing at the Supreme Court, SAP said its two products were integrated, and that such integration benefits consumers and allows companies to compete effectively. Teradata urged the justices to reject SAP's appeal. It disputed that SAP's two products were integrated and also denied there was any divide among the federal appeals courts about which rules judges should use to evaluate antitrust lawsuits. Meta Platforms and Microsoft jointly submitted a friend-of-the-court brief backing SAP at the Supreme Court. (Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by Will Dunham)

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